


Invasive Species

by saintsaint



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Benrey is a non-sentient monster that gradually and accidentally becomes human, Frenrey in that Benrey has an enormous crush that Gordon misreads as antagonism, Gen, Gordon... tired :(, Identity Issues, Narrated by the G-Man's ostensibly omniscient but absolutely idiotic employer, Not (Quite) A Game AU, Shapeshifting, Tommy is adopted AND inherits the G-Man's powers, Video Game Analogous Deaths (or are they), background Bubby/Coomer - Freeform, meta fuckery, time traveling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26553676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsaint/pseuds/saintsaint
Summary: “An invasive species is a non-native species that spreads from the point of introduction and alters its new environment. Although its impact can be beneficial, the term as most often used applies to introduced species that affect the invaded bioregions adversely.” (from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia)it is jsut a litle creacher. it Canot change this. Except, gradually, Benrey does — and the rest of this sucks dimension is just gonna have to fuckin deal, bro.
Relationships: Benrey & Tommy Coolatta, Benrey/Gordon Freeman, The Science Team - Relationship, Tommy Coolatta & The G-Man
Comments: 338
Kudos: 349





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> watched the series back in may or something, moved on, then like three weeks ago got CLOBBERED by the need to consume all content for it. still: my knowledge about most everything is limited! but my enthusiasm is great, as is my affection for these silly characters. hope u enjoy :D
> 
> See end notes for content warnings.

Look, I could just send you the links to the Wikipedia articles about Invasive species, Animals taking public transportation, Rock doves, et cetera but I’m rather certain you’d miss the point. The point is, like — and don’t laugh, because I’m serious — pigeons are cool.

They are! Listen, listen: humans (and don’t get me started on humans, because they’re _the_ coolest, actually) looked at the common rock dove and said, “hey, I like eating these things. Wish there were an easier way to catch them, though.” And then, _then,_ humans were like “oh lmao I’ll just domesticate them actually duh” and then they just _did_ and then for like five hundred years or whatever it was AWESOME, humans got to eat pigeon all the time and figured out they could carry mail and fight wars or whatever and pigeons got to be well-cared for and bred to look pretty and sleep in cute little pigeon houses before getting eaten.

But humans weren’t really paying that much attention to their pigeons so some would escape every so often and — okay, so like, long story short, now in some places the urban pigeon is considered an invasive species and humans don't really like it. But pigeons are cool, they don’t care, they figured out how to adapt to cities and now some of them even ride trains and get off at specific stops so they can get to the best abandoned food on time.

Isn’t that the coolest fucking thing? Like, they figured out how _trains_ work. Even though they’ve got little bird brains and humans like to scare them and make them fly away, pigeons were like, “uh, whatever bro, I’m just gonna keep doing my thing.” Don’t you love that? Isn’t that so cool??

The being known as the G-Man blinks twice in a row. He does so with the utmost intention, exactly like a human would, as he considers these words. “I. Thought,” he finally says, after a long and careful silence, “that pigeons. Did not. Actually. Ride trains on, purpose — I. Was under. The impression, that. That was… a myth.”

What? Oh. Uh, I dunno, I kind of skimmed the article. I’m busy, you know? Besides, the metaphor still stands. You get the metaphor, right?

The G-Man blinks twice, slowly, once again. “I am. Afraid, that I. Do not.”

...Okay, actually, that was probably my bad. Sorry — I got excited, you know how I am. So: pigeons are cool. They’re invasive, but that’s just how they are, because it’s not like the pigeon made itself that way. And they ride on _trains._ Or — maybe not, actually, but still. And I need _you_ to kill the pigeon.

So? You get it?

The G-Man, slowly, blinks once. Before he can blink a second time, there is the overwhelming sensation of an exasperated sigh. How to explain?

Look, the — the dimensions. Right? They’re supposed to stay separate. We’ve got this whole big thing about keeping them apart from each other because whenever there’s crossover, things inevitably get super fucky. Sometimes, though, even though we try _really hard,_ they get crossed over anyway. That’s where you come in! You fix the fuckups.

“Yes, I am. Quite... Aware.”

Alright, well, there’s no need to take that tone, man. The point is that we — well, it happens all the time, really, and this time was hardly our fault. But there was a brief, like, just a _millisecond_ of a convergence down at [___] and [___]. A pigeon got on a train. And this pigeon is, like… potentially a really bad pigeon. You can’t really call a pigeon _evil_ — I don’t think they’re really _person_ enough for that — but this one would absolutely wreck everyone’s shit if given the chance. Like, it would eat everything. Bye-bye this dimension, basically.

“Ah. So you wish me… To. Eliminate. An anomaly.”

Yes! Yes, exactly. Like, the pigeon is gonna get off the train, and then it’s gonna eat and kill every living thing, so you need to stop it. Yeah? You feel me?

The G-Man’s eyes narrow, but this time, at least, he doesn’t blink. “...Yes, I. Believe I do… feel. You. I will be, on my… way, then.”

And at once a train pulls up, its doors opening obediently for the strange, tall being to enter. He does not sit, merely wrapping one set of spindly fingers around a metal pole for balance as the train jerks back into motion, and he nods graciously at his employers as the train car pulls away. He, like, definitely doesn’t “feel me,” but that’s fine, as long as he does his job.

The job is often challenging, but the G-Man will always do his best to protect his home.

The G-Man’s home dimension would be familiar to you, being very similar to the dimension from which you are reading. You know: a planet called Earth dominated by ocean, flora, and insects, though the species _Homo sapiens_ has crowned itself king (erroneously, obviously). Technology is pretty incredible but also pretty commonplace. The extraordinary lives beside the ordinary, and it’s impossible to tell the difference without a closer look — assuming there’s even any difference to begin with. If you were to be displaced into this dimension, it’s quite likely you wouldn’t even notice; there are, after all, countless other dimensions nearly identical to this one. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t at all special.

But still, the G-Man has been tasked with its protection. He is _fond_ of this little place, fond of its life forms and the way light changes as the planet revolves around the sun and the coolness of a glass of water on a hot summer day. The extradimensional invader could destroy all of that, and the G-Man will not allow it.

As the train comes to a creaking halt, the G-Man steps out into a small, forested area not far from the human city known as “Seattle.” Time, obedient to its master just as its master is obedient to his employers, is stopped per the tall being's wishes. A wind, rushing through the trees before he pressed pause, leaves the leaves in an artful mess. There are birds frozen in the blue-tinted air, having taken flight in fear just moments ago, and small woodland animals as well, stuck in place as they fled.

In most cases, this is the point at which the G-Man would use the time stoppage to identify the frozen threat and eliminate it before it could do any serious damage. Nice and tidy, just as he prefers it.

Unfortunately, the time-stop does not seem to have affected this threat. The G-Man blinks twice, craning his neck to regard the invader — it must exist more strangely than anything else in this dimension to so completely disregard his control of the laws of physics. It moves slowly but determinedly about, reaching with strange, amorphous limbs which envelop every living thing it finds. The thing is a dark, ever-shifting mass of flesh, flora, feather, and chitin, occasionally spitting out colored orbs laced with mind-shifting psychic manipulation — and with every living thing it absorbs, it both grows and becomes better adapted to a continued existence in the G-Man’s dimension.

In the unknowable amount of time since it first split off from its parent monster, this invader has been quite lucky. The majority of its kind, after all, are eaten by others that are larger and more powerful than itself. This one was born just big enough that it could consume most of the small siblings it encountered, but small enough that it could hide from its larger siblings until it grew enough or had absorbed something with a beneficial adaptation it could then take for its own. With each lucky dodge away from a predatory sibling, with each consumption of a smaller creature, with each absorption and adaptation of a positive evolutionary trait, the creature had grown and changed and become in its own right a dangerous predator that could inspire the unthinking, instinctual fear every creature of its type has of those larger and stronger than themselves.

And now, it has broken through a thin dimensional wall and, left unchecked, would absorb and consume every living creature it finds, growing larger and more deadly all the time.

The G-Man frowns. He will not have this.

The briefcase he summons to his hands doesn’t look like much, but when wielded by an expert such as himself it is deadly. The battle, while not quick, is decisive — even without the time stoppage helping him, the G-Man is a very capable being.

...Look, I’m no good at describing physical fights, okay? It is gruesome, and it is impressive, and it is interesting — I guess — if you’re the kind of person who cares about that kind of thing. As far as I am concerned, it’s kinda gross and it takes way longer than it usually does. But whatever — it's not like I'm paying him by the hour.

So, systematically and kinda boringly slowly, the G-Man destroys every atom of the beast that dared to trespass in his dimension. At last, there is truly nothing living left, nothing from which it could even attempt to regenerate; he sweeps the remains into another train car to be sent back from whence it came.

The G-Man is not the type to smugly dust his hands off, nor cheekily wave it goodbye, but he is… satisfied. It is a job done, and done well — his dimension will be safe for a little longer.

He allows time to resume. The wildlife, previously fleeing from an incomprehensible monster, are just as happy to flee from the human-shaped thing suddenly in their midst. The G-Man does not mind. It is simply the way of these creatures.

As a reward for today’s success, he decides he will take a walk and soak in that which he has protected. One of his job’s perks, after all, is that when it comes to enjoying the fruits of this marvelous little dimension he calls home, he has all the time in the world.

The G-Man dismisses his briefcase, straightens his tie, and clasps his long, spider-like fingers behind him. He glances fondly around at the stream and woods that had come so close to being the first casualty of the interdimensional being. Then, breathing contentedly through his nose, he sets off at a slow, comfortable shamble through the woods and away.

But you — you remember what I told you about the invading creature, don’t you? It split off from its parent, like a cell dividing. It was not built to remember things, lacked the true memories of its parent besides the instinctual fear of those stronger and the hunger for those weaker. It had to build up its own adaptations and traits from those it consumed. But like all of its kind, it could split another off from itself as well.

While the G-Man had been extremely careful to eliminate every living iota of the particular creature that crossed into his dimension, he had not thought to look for others. And so he does not know of the microscopic progeny borne from his enemy, left behind on a blade of grass, containing the same unthinking drive to follow those dangerously dimension-consuming instincts.

I could tell him about it, but… the man _does_ work hard. I’d hate to take this brief break away from him for something so small and surely insignificant.

Besides, I can just tell — leaving this unthinking, super-adaptable creature be for a while, to consume and grow and change — that will be a _lot_ more fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: narrator breaks fourth wall; non-graphic death of a non-sapient creature; a lil bit about being tiny and insignificant in the vastness of the multiverse.
> 
> 1\. my brain has been SCREAMING at me "G-MAN IS A MAGICAL GIRL. MAGICAL GIRL G-MAN NOW OR ELSE" so that's a bit how ima write him lmao. briefcase magical weapon, selected by mysterious powers for earth-saving job, probably has an outfit-change sequence.  
> 2\. god, i'm so amused by the concept of "good dad but awkward human has to deal with reality-bending fuckery" so this fic will hopefully have it twice in gman&tommy and then gordon&joshua.  
> 3\. i plan on bubby and coomer being in this, but figured i'd wait to tag in case we don't get there. also this might become Gordon/Benrey if it goes long enough but eh, who knows!  
> 4\. you can find me on tumblr as cartoonsaint if u want :)
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY, the G-Man's employers sent him to destroy an extradimensional, super-adaptive, extremely predatory anomaly. he succeeded, but overlooked a singular cell of it that split off and could become its own little nightmare of a creature. THIS TIME...  
> “look at his fists, they’re balled... i’m gonna have to protect you. i’m gonna have to protect you from him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

Can you even really call something an alien invader when technically it was born on Earth?

I mean — yeah, you definitely can, but… I don’t know. I almost feel bad for the little thing.

The dimension its species is adapted for is not at all like this one, after all. It was meant for a simple life with simple rules: consume what it can, avoid what it can’t, grow and evolve until something bigger and more fit comes along and destroys it so utterly that it cannot regenerate itself. For all the adaptations present in its home dimension, nothing more complex than the average slime mold has yet surfaced (not to knock slime molds — those guys are awesome and I have total respect for them).

The point is, the little thing’s life was meant to be dangerous but, overall, uncomplicated.

And for a time, it is: it acts much like the amoeba of this dimension, ambling along using a pseudopod or two and seeking out nutrition. Bacteria are abundant, as is dead plant matter; neither fight back, which is perfectly acceptable for the little invader. It grows. To give it the voice it will eventually have, one might imagine it saying, “haha, yooo.”

It grows enough that it is larger than the average amoeba. When next it comes across one, the thing’s basic instincts tell it that despite the amoeba’s clear adaptations, it could probably take it. So, following the base coding of a species from a primarily dreary, dull dimension, it sings a small psychic dot of pure color at the true amoeba; this is meant to act as a lure and a calming agent, distracting its prey so that the predator may more successfully pounce.

The Earth amoeba, being slightly stupider than the little invader and having neither context nor understanding of why this little psychic dot should matter, is not drawn in as the invader expects. This dumbfounds it momentarily, especially when its meal starts moseying away. “Hey yo, wait—”

In the end, the invader is larger and faster than the Earth organism. Despite its instincts’ initial failure it is able to give chase and eventually capture and consume the prey. As it digests, it searches its meal’s DNA for any useful adaptations.

 _Eat. Grow,_ the DNA says.

“Yeah, already doin’ that, thanks,” the invader might reply with a lazy smack of its lips. “What else ya got?”

 _Reproduce by division,_ the DNA commands.

“Wuh?” the invader might say, brought up short. It might bring the DNA closer, might reread that bit.

 _Reproduce by division,_ the DNA insists.

“...nah,” the invader might reply, a little insulted. Its species can and does reproduce, but right now it’s still dangerously too small — in its home dimension, to reproduce at this stage would be to doom itself to be eaten, possibly even by its progeny itself. “Fuckin… Idiot. Wants me to get ate just cause I ate it. Whiny baby loser.”

The invader doesn’t actually say or even think these things, of course — it’s still just a stupid little unicellular thing. It doesn’t even pause after consuming the unlucky amoeba, already on the hunt for more prey to help it grow (ideally living prey with adaptations that are actually useful). It doesn’t activate any of its new DNA, continuing to follow the instincts and rules with which it was spawned.

And for a time, that’s how things go. The invader hides from those stronger, eats those smaller, borrows adaptations from its living prey, and grows. In its home dimension it might continue in this way forever, growing larger and stranger but ultimately remaining a one-celled being.

Instead, the invader does as its nature bids and consumes a particularly small organism that happens to be multicellular.

“Uh. What, uh. What do _you_ want me to do,” the invader might murmur, squinting at the DNA of its latest catch.

_Split nucleus and reproduce —_

“Ugh, _bro_ ,” the invader might groan.

_— while remaining one organism._

This causes the invader to pause. “...huh?”

_Being multicellular will allow for continued growth without detriment to speed._

“...huh,” the invader might say again. “Huhhhh.” That sounds like a lot of work, but on the other hand… And with a shrug, the invader takes a brand new step for its species and for itself.

It turns out that being multicellular really _works_ for the invader. It also opens up an enormous realm of possibilities, each of which it takes to with species-typical hunger. 

Being a plant is _boring_ (not that that is a particular concern for the invader yet). Trying to move quickly is much more difficult with stiff cell walls, and ultimately the invader avoids using DNA from the kingdom Flora unless it is vulnerable and needs the stiffer protection.

Being a fungi is pretty cool, but their DNA wants the invader to reproduce and spread via spores way more than is comfortable. Its primary instincts, after all, are still to jealously guard itself and its earned adaptations — to create more of itself would at this point be pointless.

The game changer comes from the kingdom Animalia. It doesn’t really matter what exactly it is that the invader first consumes — what matters is that as it continues to grow, it gains access to other, more complicated animals. Insects, unsurprisingly, are one of the earliest complex creatures the invader ingests and mimics, but the most exciting comes when it finds the tiny eggs of a small snake.

With growth has come the necessity for the invader to ingest more of a living creature’s DNA before it can properly copy it. Too little and its imitations are incomplete; too long dead, and the genetic material has already started to atrophy. So an egg — complete, young, alive, small, and unable to fight back — is _perfect._

And it turns out being a snake is pretty perfect, too: its slim body accommodates hiding, its dark pattern camouflages it, and it is perfectly suited for consuming large prey. It can even swallow things alive, which is totally ideal for the little invader.

But the weird thing is that it also _thinks._

Compared to a human, a snake is not very smart. Compared to an amoeba, it is _brilliant_ — and with the consumption of small mammals and toggling of those DNA sliders, the invader is only getting smarter. Sure, many of the things it’s thinking are very basic, but the ability to form memories at all is nothing to sneeze at — _and,_ weirder still, it finds that with a bit of curious extradimensional fiddling it can even access the memories of that which it has previously consumed.

The invader rapidly gains knowledge of things it has never experienced itself, things that stir its evolving brain to _feel_ something — but that isn’t in the invader's base genetic code. Its first priorities must always be to eat those smaller and hide from those larger — everything else is just a useful adaptation that enables it to do its job more efficiently.

But the memories are intriguing, not to mention somewhat confusing… sometimes disastrously so.

For instance, several small animals from the rodent family know that a human hangs out by the edge of the stream most afternoons. This human is loud, which is frightening, but it does not bother any creature that crosses its path; in fact, when small mammals bravely approach, the human often tosses them food (cashews, for the record). This human makes the invader’s prey feel warm in a way distinct from the heat of a sun-warmed rock.

There are other humans which visit less frequently; these ones often attempt to capture any animal they see. The invader has never eaten any prey that one of these humans has successfully captured. A smart creature might recognize that these particular humans ought to be avoided.

But the invader still isn’t quite used to thinking, so when one afternoon it notices there is a human by the stream it does the mental equivalent of a shrug and assumes this one is probably safe to slither by.

Obviously, it isn’t.

From above, a rock three times larger than the invader’s body sails down to smash right in its path. The invader, presently snake-shaped, rears back in alarm and shifts direction — “uh, _not_ cool” — only for another rock to crash down beside it, and then another. The creature zigzags from side to side in a frantic attempt to avoid being crushed, so focused on its immediate survival it fails to realize where it is being herded until it is too late. From directly above, the young, rock-throwing human reaches out and —

Well, honestly, I’d rather not describe what happens. You are likely well-acquainted with the casual cruelty of young humans who have yet to learn better. What matters is that this human captures the invader and hurts it, badly and repeatedly.

“Bro, _ow_ !” the invader might snarl, had it the ability to speak; instead it wriggles furiously, lashing out with sharp little fangs that fail to pierce the gardening gloves the child wears. “Yo, you wanna _die_?”

The invader itself has died plenty of times before. So long as a few cells are left undamaged, it can regenerate no problem. But those times have been mostly quick and relatively painless — this experience is, comparatively, _so sucks._

It’s not all bad, though. Because this is how the being that will eventually be known as Benrey first meets the human eventually known as Gordon.

No, Gordon isn’t the little shithead in gardening gloves. He’s the one in the orange dress with deep pockets, sprinting directly at the shithead and yelling with all his seven-year-old might as he sinks a fist into the kid’s gut.

Shithead loses his grip on the invader, which consequently finds itself unexpectedly thrown into the air. Gordon kicks Shithead in the shins and throws another punch before the other kid gets his act together, balls his fists, and starts fighting back. Simultaneously, gravity retakes the snake-shaped invader and drops it precisely on young Gordon’s right hand.

Panicked, the invader wraps itself around his wrist to prevent a worse fall — but, upon realizing that its perch is human (the very same species that was just harming it!), makes the quick, stupid, animal decision to _bite._ Gordon, already yelling and panicking himself about what he is quickly finding to be a fight he cannot hope to win, screams louder and throws a particularly messy punch at his and the invader’s enemy. Luck wins out; his fist catches Shithead under the chin, putting stars in his eyes just long enough for Gordon to scramble away and up into a nearby tree he’s climbed many times before.

Shithead recovers enough to shout up at Gordon, livid. Gordon hollers back, righteous and raging in turn. They exchange words, Gordon emphatically throwing his arms about. The invader desperately hangs on. Eventually Shithead throws his hands up and stomps off, leaving Gordon and the invader in the tree to gradually get their heart rates back under control.

It takes Gordon a minute to realize that the stinging in his hand is on-going. He yelps at finding the bloodied snake hanging off his wrist, its teeth embedded in the delicate flesh between thumb and fingers, but he manages to swallow the sound before it becomes another full-blown scream. He leans in breathlessly, brow furrowing and eyes alight as he examines the creature he has just protected.

“You’re… Huh. You’re not as badly hurt as I thought you were,” he says, voice hushed. “Look at you — you’re a cute little thing, aren’t you?”

The invader would hiss at him, but its mouth is full and memories from its previous meals are stirring in the back of its simple mind. This is not the same human that had attacked it; this is the one that is loud but kind, that gives away food and watches raptly as the forest lives and breathes around him. Even now, with easy prey in his grasp, he doesn’t attack — he just watches with startlingly green eyes, murmuring to himself about scale patterns.

Gingerly, the invader loosens its clamped jaws and removes its little fangs from the child’s hand. It flickers a tongue out, tasting the air. It has had extended access now to the blood welling up from Gordon’s hand, and its unusual cells begin to break it down — though there is far from enough for the invader to use in its own shape-changing, it is enough for it to file the information away as it watches the human right back. Something in it knows that information about this creature will be valuable to it.

That first day, that’s about all that happens. The two young creatures watch one other, totally unaware of the other’s thoughts, as the invader’s body starts to regenerate itself. Eventually Gordon climbs back down, the invader still wrapped firmly around his wrist, and attempts to gently shoo it off and into a cozy cluster of rocks.

“ _Wuh_ ,” the invader might say, still baffled about the interaction. Snakes don’t quite think this way, but the addition of mammal DNA and its own extradimensional properties allow it to understand that this human stepped in and fought another human — it had _presumed_ for the purpose of stealing that one’s prey but, rather than eating it, this human now carefully nudges it from around his wrist and deposits it in the grass.

“Okay, uh, I have to go,” Gordon says to the odd little snake. It watches him with strange eyes and Gordon can’t help grinning at the little thing — it’s weird, its behavior all wrong for the species it resembles, but Gordon hates to see things get hurt and he’s glad it seems to be alright. “Uh. Well… Bye, I guess?”

He waves awkwardly. He almost thinks the snake tracks his hand — and Gordon finally rolls his eyes at himself, turning on a heel to head back home. “It’s just a snake,” he mutters to himself. “Don’t be stupid.”

The invader watches him go.

Its first and foremost understanding of the world is that those that are small are meant to be eaten and those that are large are meant to eat. It is the very basis of its existence, the code that powers its species and its existence. Today, though, it had the first, confused inklings of something new, an insight that could never have occurred in its home dimension.

Maybe there’s a third option. Maybe, sometimes, those that are large are meant to _protect_ the small.

“Mneuh mneuh mneuh,” the invader might scoff at itself. “ _Idiot._ ”

The strange human has at this point disappeared from its vision so the invader turns back to the woods, back to hunting. For now, it has a job: Consume. Grow. Don’t get distracted by anything, not even the human that will eventually be called Gordon Freeman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: non-graphic descriptions of animals hunting/eating things; non-graphic animal abuse ( D: probably won't happen again in this??); children in fisticuffs.
> 
> 1\. *flexes loudly* TRANS! GORDON!!  
> 2\. tbh even as a kid i think gordon is smart enough to realize he is not meant to be a fighter. this little tussle was probably the only fight this nerd ever got in before black mesa, but he also probably hangs onto the pride of "winning" for like WAY longer than he should. like omg bro u were 7, get over it??  
> 3\. i am here for SHENANIGANS and EMOTIONS. all these characters are kind idiots and all of them are gonna be SUCH good friends :D  
> 4\. so benrey isn’t Fae (noun) in this but he is a bit fae (adjective). imagine u save a lil snake once as a kid and then as an adult the snake shows back up human-shaped like “i have loved you ever since that day *does weird shit for ur attention*”  
> 5\. up next: the sand and the mud :)
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY, the extradimensional invader grew, adapted, and was introduced to the concept of kindness and the concept of Gordon. THIS TIME...  
> "man... we used to be great friends."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

The thing is: the human keeps showing up.

The extradimensional invader recognizes him now, and not just because of the blood it ingested when it bit him. No, it’s because it’s been watching him, hidden up among the branches and leaves, safely out of reach in case the child chooses predation over protection. “He could be mean,” the creature might argue. “I gotta make sure he’s not mean.”

But even now, that’s not really the reason it watches this particular human so closely.

Every afternoon, rain or shine, Gordon clomps down to the stream, vibrant and alone. Sometimes he reads. Often he talks to himself with wide, frantic gestures, like he’s having an argument with an invisible assailant. He tosses pebbles and sticks in the stream, watches the way the water moves around them, consults his books and scratches numbers into the sandy bank. He climbs trees — never the same tree as the creature hides in, for it always flees before the child can even consider it — and he builds miniature structures of sticks and leaves. When he notices little mammals, he tosses them bits of cashew from the snack packs he always has stuffed in his pockets. When there are other kids around, he goes silent and fidget-still.

It’s just weird, lonely little kid stuff, but the invader still watches, curious. It develops the habit of eating anything that gets close to Gordon (only so it can gather more data, of course). It examines the memories of its collection, focused on the way this human is so gentle and kind.

The invader is advanced enough at this point to find this _frustrating._ Doesn’t this human know how things are supposed to work? Kill or be killed is the end-all and be-all of existence. The invader _knows_ that.

Nevermind that it also “knows” that its colorful psychic projections should lure in prey, not spook it away. Or that it “knows” that in terms of efficiency, animals are technically less fit than amoeba. Or that it “knows” that it should be spending its time consuming and growing, not stagnating and _thinking._ What’s most important is that Gordon is doing things wrong — _dangerously_ wrong, even, maybe — and, well. Maybe the invader should do something about it.

If anyone were to try to point out the many cognitive errors going on here, the invader would probably very loudly say “WUH?” and then briskly speedwalk away before things could be even a little bit explained. Even now, once it’s gotten its strange mind made up it can be very, very stubborn.

So one warm day, when the human is relatively quiet and absorbed in a book, the creature shifts its form. Its wariness demands that it be the biggest creature it has in its arsenal, just in case, and it flexes its claws against the tree branch as adrenaline surges through its body. Instinct and emotion clash within it: fear, hope, excitement, uncertainty —

“Fuck it,” the creature might say, whereupon it eschews climbing down the tree for a faster, more efficient method.

From Gordon’s perspective, his day is going pretty okay. Classes are exciting, at least, even though everyone else is older and looks at him kinda funny. He managed to stay quiet in the library long enough to grab some new books on physics before they kicked him out for being too loud (even though he tries really, _really_ hard to keep his voice under control). There aren’t any other kids at the stream today, so he can read and talk aloud and figure out his book in peace.

He’s just now muttering to himself and running a hand through his hair, trying to wrap his head around a particularly advanced concept, when one of the most basic laws of physics is exemplified before him: gravity pulls objects towards the earth.

This is represented by a live, wild raccoon, its fur puffed out to make it look huge, dropping suddenly from the branch above to land right beside him.

“Sup,” we might imagine the invader saying, cool and collected.

Gordon _shrieks._

He scrambles backwards, tripping twice in his haste to get away from the supposed beast. Splashing ungracefully through the stream, the child attempts to put as much distance between them as he can as the invader lets its fur smooth down in confusion.

“Dude, I’m a mammal,” it might say. “You _like_ mammals; you’re always givin’ em cashews. What gives, bro?”

Meanwhile, Gordon pauses on the other side of the creek, heart pounding as he stares down the creature that appeared virtually out of nowhere. It appears to be a rather small raccoon, its round eyes surrounded in a dark mask, and Gordon’s mind races as it pushes off its front feet to sit on its haunches and tilt its ears curiously at him. Gordon had gone through a phase a year or two ago (a.k.a. _forever_ ago, from the perspective of a seven year old) where he read everything he could get his hands on about the local fauna. A lot of that information has been forgotten in favor of facts about lightspeed, force, and other physics bullshit, but he still knows enough to recognize rabid behavior… and this isn’t it.

A smart kid would back away and leave anyway, but for all Gordon’s knowledge he’s kind of dumb. Anxiety and a previous hyperfocus race against each other in his head only to cancel each other out and leave him standing there, shoes soaked, watching the creature on the other side of the small creek.

The apparent raccoon returns the favor. To Gordon’s eyes, it almost looks… disappointed.

“You’re supposed to give me a cashew,” the invader might say, not so much disappointed as irritated. It’s spent ages collecting data on this human (in lieu of collecting more DNA, as it is meant to), so it’s _pretty_ sure it knows how this interaction is supposed to go. It’s possible that it’s misunderstood everything, possible it’s wrong about this human’s tendency towards protection over predation, but…

It takes a hesitant hop forward, extending a paw much like it’s seen the human do when tempting small animals to his hand. “Cashew? Bro? Cashew please?”

Gordon stares at the raccoon on the creek’s edge. “Oh my god,” he says under his breath. Lately science has taken over his brain, but he has a “guilty pleasure” of reading fantasy books that he will never quite grow out of; he knows what a fantastical call to action looks like.

Shaky legs squelch in the mud as they carry him back into the stream, towards what he is now flutteringly certain is his destiny. The raccoon hops closer in turn, its little paw outstretched, and Gordon gulps. He reaches back, heart in his throat.

The creature’s paw lands delicately on his forearm, claws flexing carefully against the skin of his wrist. Then it extends the other paw — Gordon strangles a yelp — grasping his hand and turning it over, shoving its nose into his palm. It sniffs, dexterous little hands feeling all over, then looks up at Gordon with an animal expression of confused displeasure.

“Oh!” Gordon says breathlessly, like it’s been punched out of him. His face is turning red as reality reasserts itself, his hopes for a shenanigans-filled adventure in which he is the only hope of saving the world evaporating faster than spilled water in a New Mexico summer. “You — you just. You just want a cashew? …You just want a cashew.”

He pulls away, immediately fishing in his skirt pockets for a snack. The creature hops closer, the edge of the water soaking the sand from its fur, and watches raptly as Gordon pulls out a single cashew.

“Uh,” Gordon says nervously, and moves the treat back and forth. A smile clambers onto his face as he watches the animal track its movement. “Hey, buddy. Do you, uh, you want this?”

The invader has been extremely patient thus far, which hasn’t been easy for the personality it’s been developing. “Ugh,” it might finally say with a roll of its eyes. “You really gonna make me—? Fine, bro.” And it launches itself towards Gordon and into the water — water with which it has no experience in this form.

The water isn’t fast, but it does reach up to Gordon’s knees. When the creature splashes into the current, Gordon twitches nervously but holds his ground — even if it’s not a magical creature inviting him into a phenomenal world and he’s pretty sure it’s only got eyes for the cashew, he's still an anxious kid. But when the raccoon starts struggling, its legs not long enough to keep it out of the water, Gordon’s eyes widen and he automatically reaches out, scooping the struggling creature up into his arms.

“H-hey, hey, I got you,” Gordon stammers, and at once the creature stills. Gordon pats its wet head, concerned and anxious. “Are you okay?”

The invader’s mind races, as much as it can — but this human has held it before without hurting it, and he isn’t attacking now, so…

“Bbbbb,” the invader says, snorting a bit of water out of its lungs. Gordon, startled, laughs, and carries the creature back to the sandy banks.

They see each other every day after that. “Cuz of the cashews, bro. Duh,” the invader might protest, but that doesn’t explain its careful focus on the human’s behavior even after Gordon runs out of treats for the day. It notices that Gordon doesn’t seem to recognize it when it’s not in the shape of a raccoon; it adapts, keeping that form consistently whenever he’s around. It realizes that while he will follow if the invader is consistent and clear enough, Gordon prefers to be the one in charge of what they do together; it adapts, and lets Gordon lead the way and set the pace. It catches on that laughter is positive; it adapts, and will do anything to keep its human entertained and smiling.

It’s cute, isn’t it? Or at least, it is if you can get past the knowledge that this innocent child is interacting not just with a wild animal, but with a hyper-carnivorous extradimensional invader. I mean, you gotta remember that the thing is bad news, okay? I’m going to call G-Man about it eventually. Probably soon, even. I understand, logically, that it has to go.

It’s just… the sight of these two over the next few months, of Gordon playing and laughing until tears roll down his cheeks, of the invader following always just a little bit behind as it learns from him… it’s sweet, like ice cold lemonade on a summer day. But at some point you’re going to reach the bottom of the glass. You're going to set the cup down, turn back to your work, and get on with the everyday realities of life.

These two young creatures are friends for just a season, just a quarter of a revolution of a small blue planet in a boring dimension so much like any other. But for the thing that will become Benrey, it’s everything.

Their eventual separation is an unsurprising one. You remember Shithead, the cruel kid from earlier? At some point he shows up again at the stream while Gordon and the invader are — you guessed it — playing in the sand and the mud.

Gordon is loudly and excitedly talking through his understanding of special relativity in physics while his raccoon-shaped companion listens dutifully and comprehends only that doing so pleases its friend. Shithead isn’t quiet as he spots Gordon and storms over, scowling, but the younger boy is too absorbed to notice until he’s practically on top of him, shoving him and snarling insults.

Gordon isn’t strong, nor is he yet particularly fast, but he scrambles away just quick enough to put a little space between him and Shithead. He’s already saying something, both apologizing and trying to convince the bigger boy to stop, when the monster shaped like a raccoon steps between them.

Honestly, the invader doesn’t even recognize this human as the same one that once tortured it. It only knows that the scent of Gordon’s blood is in the air, and that just as Gordon once protected it, now it needs to protect him.

The invader hasn’t spent much time consuming things and growing lately, too focused on its — well, its _friend_ , to use a human term. But it knows how to shift its cells and genetic structure around a little, knows what mammals instinctively find threatening, and it pulls on that knowledge now.

The invader never even touches him, but Shithead will still have nightmares about this incident for the rest of his life. Teeth, too large and much too many; eyes, gleaming and all narrowed on him; fur and form bristling in ways unnatural and painful just to see.

From behind, distracted as he is with a cut bleeding right above and into his eye, it just looks to Gordon like his small raccoon friend puffs out its fur and then Shithead pales and goes running.

“...Seriously?” Gordon huffs, brow creasing, and the creature turns back to him, its appearance totally normal. It hops over and puts its front paws on his wrist, eyes glittering with what we might call pride, and Gordon grins. “Well, you sure showed him, huh, buddy?” He kneels back down in the wet sand, wipes the blood away from his cut, and continues his explanation of the relationship between space and time.

By the time Gordon waves goodbye for the day to his inhuman friend, Shithead has spread the news to the adults in town. They don’t believe all of it, obviously, but they understand that there’s a wild raccoon unafraid of humans by the stream, and that it will threaten their children with teeth and claws. Unsurprisingly, Gordon’s parents insist he find a different spot to study and play after school — and because they know him well, they insist that be where they can keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t sneak back to the woods.

Gordon isn’t happy about it. He cries, loudly and genuinely, at being separated from his friend, but, well, time goes on. His family moves later that year; when later he thinks of that summer, it is with the fond bemusement of someone realizing that they were a _very_ weird child. What the hell kind of kid befriends a wild creature and explains science to it during daily playdates?

For the wild creature’s part, all it knows is that Gordon is there every day… until he’s not. It doesn’t understand what happened — and it won’t, not for twenty more years.

Even then, things will never be as simple as those days when they played in the sand and in the mud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: animal mentioned eating other animals; for a second it looks like an animal might drown; brief bullying; a lil bit of non-graphic body horror. (as always if there's more i ought to be tagging for, please lmk!)
> 
> 1\. i am not immune to catboy benrey, but i do think that raccoon fits him better and also i like them. i've been watching some videos of raccoons for "research" for this fic and they're sooooo cute, they're SO CUTE, i just wanna see a lil bright weird kid carrying one and being like "this is my best friend :)"  
> 2\. yall see the Act 3 Commentary? idk if the birds are for sure associated with Benrey, but i was planning on there being a bunch of them next chapter anyway so that works out pretty okay for me >:3  
> 3\. i'm glad G-man's employer(s)/the narrator don't seem to be too off-putting to you all. mostly their (her?) job is gonna be to tell the story, but HLVRAI is well-positioned for meta fuckery, so. in the meantime, if you like this kind of thing, might i rec qr_code's "[daisy, daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24106918/chapters/58030720)" if you haven't already read it?  
> 4\. up next: TOMMY :D
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY, young Benrey and Gordon met, became best friends, and were separated. THIS TIME...  
> "TOMMY. TOMMY!!! *sustained pink sweet voice*"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

For a while, the invading creature just waits.

Its human has never missed a day before and it is not at all prone to hysterics, so for that first day it just plays in the sand and the mud by itself (though it finds the experience much less enjoyable alone than with a friend). It ignores easy prey, its focus on the crest of the hill and the possibility that Gordon could show up at any moment. When night falls, it climbs its tree and keeps an eye out, just in case.

Days pass, then weeks. The creature doesn’t consume much; indeed, after a while it even starts chasing off other animals in the area, guarding the stream from anything that isn’t its person. After all, what if he hasn’t come back because there are too many snakes? Too many small mammals? Too many raccoons…?

Though it doesn’t follow the same mortal rules of the animals whose shape it has stolen, it still needs some sustenance; without, its forms grow leaner, rangier. Soon it won’t even have the living cells necessary to remain a raccoon. It will have to take smaller forms, forms Gordon wouldn’t recognize as his playmate.

The creature waits, day in and day out, in light and dark, in heat and cold, in sun and rain —

Aw, Christ, this — this is too sad for me. I don’t like talking about this. 

Because _remember:_ this thing’s presence in this dimension is _evil,_ alright? So what if it’s developed a bit of a personality, a bit of an attachment to a human that doesn’t and won’t understand it, not for a long time. So what if it doesn’t know what to do with the feeling that clutches at its heart when Gordon doesn’t show up, day after day. So what if it’s adapted and doesn’t seem interested in following its initial instincts to consume all life in this dimension. So what if none of this is its fault.

It’s not _really_ a likeable little creature — it’s an invading, extradimensional _monster,_ and its behavior now isn’t a promise of its actions later. I can’t get attached to the thing. I don’t _want_ to.

So let’s talk about something else instead.

We’ll skip forward, oh, a year or so, and move from Washington to Georgia. I’ll give you some background: this character has spent the last few years in various foster care homes and state-run orphanages. It’s not that he’s a difficult child, but he is an odd one. He just about never speaks, he’s not great with eye contact, and his preferences are so slim as to be impossible to deal with for the casual guardian. Plus he keeps taking things apart, and by things I mean the dead bugs and animals he has an uncanny knack for finding. He’s curious about how life works.

One day he’ll be known as Tommy Coolatta. For now, he goes by Thomas.

Thomas is seven years old — an auspicious number, seven — and living in a foster home with five other children. Their guardians are just that: guardians, overlookers, caretakers in the most basic sense of the world, nothing at all like the gentle, caring kind of parental figure with whom children flourish. Thomas doesn’t get along with the other children, either, and the day is hot and muggy, so he is alone when we find him.

Thomas’s tools are lacking, just a pocket knife and some rusted utensils saved from the garbage, but today he also has a large cinder block he’s brought from around the side of the building. Thomas brushes his hand slowly, rhythmically, along the rabbit’s foot in his pocket. The fur is soft and worn; it is comforting.

Before him, a dying rat holds weakly onto life. Whatever happened to it is not important; what is important is that it will not survive much longer. Seeing the poor thing suffering hurts Thomas heart-deep, makes him want to cry and cry, even as he schools his face to appear mild and calm to the outside viewer.

Thomas also wants to practice his dissecting skills — he’s read the books, of course, but nothing compares to hands-on experience — which he cannot do until the rat is dead. More than that, though, Thomas wants badly to be _nice._ He knows that killing the rat quickly would be the kindest thing to do; it is why he brought over the cinder block, after all. He ought to do it soon, put the thing out of its misery.

But he cannot bring himself to do it.

So he just sits there, paralyzed between what he knows he ought to do and what he cannot.

At least, until a sleek, fat pigeon flutters down from a nearby telephone pole. Thomas’s eye is immediately drawn to it, and not just because it is so much bigger and healthier-looking than any of the other birds in the area. No, the thing that lets Thomas know that this is no ordinary animal is its plumage.

On the occasional trips to the library his guardian allows, Thomas has gotten his hands on some books about genetics and read a little about the topic on the Internet. While Wikipedia won’t be founded for another two years, there’s still plenty of information available to the odd child who knows where to look. Rock doves (known commonly as pigeons), being present in Thomas’s environment, draw his attention. He learns what he can about how their biology works and how their DNA can affect their coloration.

This particular pigeon's feathers are various shades of bluish-grey, as is typical of its species. The dark, mask-shaped pattern across its face is unusual, but not unheard of. The iridescent coloring of its neck, though, is impossible: what on the ordinary pigeons should be green and magenta is here a flashy, proud _blue,_ something like an Indian Peafowl or a Blue Morpho Butterfly. It is a mutation that is extremely unlikely to have developed spontaneously.

Thomas stares at it, unblinking. The pigeon is not only unbothered by his attention but almost seems _pleased,_ strutting quickly closer until it is able to flutter up and onto Thomas’s knee. It is heavy, clearly well-fed. Perhaps it is even beloved.

Thomas stays utterly still, barely breathing. Cooing happily, the pigeon stretches out its impossibly colored neck to cheerfully butt its beak against Thomas’s cheek. Its feathers are extremely soft; Thomas’s hand twitches with longing to put his fingers to it, but the confused emotions roiling within him prevent him.

We also still have the problem of the dying rat, of course.

At last, the pigeon seems content with its extremely friendly hello to the young boy. It flutters off his knee to land beside the rat, looking back at Thomas and ruffling its wings as though to say, “yooo, watch this.”

Then it opens its beak, wide, wider still, nearly impossibly wide — Thomas’s breath catches — and beyond, unhinging its jaw like a snake.

The pigeon-shaped creature leans down, scoops the still-living rat into its mouth, and swallows it down within a second.

Pigeons are certainly _not_ supposed to do that.

It turns back to Thomas, its impossible mouth normal again, seeming pleased to have solved the problem. Once again, it opens its beak — Thomas stares, mind racing, half-expecting to be eaten himself and mourning the fact that he will never be able to grow up and publish a paper on this strange impossibility of nature — but this time the thing merely sings out a series of psychic violet-pink and blue orbs.

...Oh.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Thomas does not understand what’s happening. He wants to, though, so despite his confusion and fear he reaches out with a steady hand, touching a finger to one of the colored balls of light.

Emotions that are not his own briefly overtake him: relief, elation, excitement, fondness, something sweet and soft like seeing someone you love after a long time away.

 _Magenta to blue means it’s good to see you,_ Thomas thinks idly. The colored feelings fade from the visible spectrum and from his own emotions. Thomas’s hand is still outstretched; the pigeon-shaped creature hops up to it almost expectantly. It waits beneath his hand, eyes flashing with strange intelligence.

Thomas clears his throat. His voice is weak — he’s not even sure when he used it last. But he’s curious beyond belief and determined to know more about this strange, friendly creature, so he gathers himself and says, “Hi. My name’s Thomas,” and gently, carefully, strokes the side of its soft face.

The creature is delighted — I, however, am _not._

Seriously! We left this creature all the way in _Seattle_ — how the hell did it get to Georgia? That’s, like, at least a hundred miles or something. And it looks happy, and healthy, and it’s adapted to use its psychic singing thing to, what, like, communicate or something? And why on earth is it targeting Tommy? What is _happening?_

Ugh. Every single time you hit the Skip button you always end up missing some vitally important scene and getting spoiled for the rest of the story, huh? Alright then, nothing else for it: let’s rewind a bit.

So: Benrey — rather, not-yet-Benrey — rather, the extradimensional, mega-predatory, monstrous _creature_ to which I am _not_ getting emotionally attached —

...Starting over.

A year back in the woods outside a Seattle suburb, the creature becomes thinner and unhealthier by the day. With autumn, the children who played by the stream begin school and thus show up less frequently; this matters little to the creature, who only has interest in one child. But the months pass, weather cooling, until it’s much too cold for any person to visit the stream at all. For a time, the creature is truly alone.

It is at this point that the train starts coming.

Oh! That’s the G-Man’s train — excellent! He’s already on top of it, thank god. Let’s watch.

Once a day, time stops just long enough for the G-Man’s train to pull up and drop off a solitary figure before departing. The figure is tall, dressed in unusually colorful clothes for the G-Man (he usually prefers monochrome suits, I thought?) and a warm, puffy, yellow jacket of the kind common to the late 1990s. The figure stays for an hour or so, quietly reading a book, before leaving an… egg? And the train returns, picks him up, and is gone until it reappears the next day.

Weird, but the guy’s a professional, so whatever. He probably knows what he’s doing.

The creature at this point is cold, thin, and reckoning with confusion and concern over Gordon’s continued absence. It is displeased that its solitude is interrupted by the tall figure, and displeased further by its own weakness and inability to do anything about it. In addition to that, although it has no memory of its parent-creature being slaughtered during a time-stop, it has enough sense to recognize that something strange and potentially dangerous is happening when the world goes blue and still.

So once again, it watches. It starts out from far away, in the trees and out of reach of the figure below, gathering data on the strange human that visits so frequently despite the cold.

The figure disregards it. He just quietly sits, reads his book, and before departing fishes an egg out of his pocket to leave behind. He does it for days, not even looking up when the creature purposefully makes noise in a test of curiosity. It’s _weird._

One day after the figure has left, the creature sidles up to investigate the spot he had occupied. It’s still warm with his body heat. The scent he’s left behind is unfamiliar but not bad: latex, artificial orange, wool and polyester. More interesting is the egg: when the creature puts its hands on it, not only is it heated through, but something within it _moves._

The creature pauses in disbelief. “Bro? _Wuh?_ ” it might say, because not only has the figure left behind nourishment, he’s left behind a _living egg_ — the perfect medium for the creature itself to consume and develop a new form.

It’s suspicious, of course, but… the creature does need sustenance, and a new form is always useful.

The next day, the figure smiles when he sees that the egg he had left is missing. He sits, reads for an hour, and pretends not to notice the small, roughly raccoon-shaped creature watching him with intelligent eyes from a nearby tree. When he gets up to leave, he pulls out a homemade, portable incubating tank and selects a different type of egg to leave behind.

They continue like this for some time. The figure leaves a different type of egg each visit, chock full of DNA that the creature might never have had access to without him: puffin, poison dart tree frog, african grey parrot, octopus. It grows smarter, healthier, and gradually more trusting and curious about the human who somehow knows exactly what it needs.

At last, it decides it is time that they properly meet.

The figure has barely dismissed the train before the creature is traipsing over as though it does this everyday, uncertainty only noticeable in the extra-sharp claws it has manifested (just in case). It settles a foot or two away from the human’s typical spot, waiting.

The human blinks twice in rapid succession, surprised, before relief and elation spill across his face. He clutches his hands together to keep himself from reacting too loudly and steps carefully to his spot, sinking down on long legs under the creature’s watchful gaze.

This time he doesn’t even bring out a book. He goes right for the incubator he carries in his bag (colorful, embroidered, far from a briefcase) and opens it, biting his lip against his grin. He steals a glance at the creature, so close at last, and is surprised by how nearly _normal_ it looks. He’s accustomed to a little more mix-and-matchiness (but how? The creature has never been this close before?) and decides he ought to do a little test.

The human selects the largest egg he has, one from an ostrich. He hefts it in his gloved hands, considering, and extends it towards the creature.

The creature eyes it before hopping closer, reaching out to touch the egg experimentally. It is far too large for it to fit in its mouth.

The human holds his breath as the creature hitches its jaw open wide, wider, wider still — and, at last, impossibly wide, like a snake. He can’t help the delighted grin in his face as the creature carefully swallows down the enormous egg without breaking it.

“Hi,” the human says as quietly as he’s able. The creature’s ears twitch, listening to a voice that is far younger than the G-Man’s ought to be. “My name’s Tommy.”

Oh, _shit._

Unfrightened by the creature’s far-too-many teeth, Tommy (Thomas — Tommy — how??) leaves his hand out, holding his breath as it at last approaches to let him brush his fingers against its face.

“You’re only just meeting me,” says the lanky, human, _not-approved-for-time-travel_ teenager with a brilliant, happy smile, “but I’ve, I’ve _really_ missed you.”

The creature allows him to stroke its face, accepting the affection with a sort of lonely desperation. It presses closer, crawling into the human’s lap, and a seventeen-year-old Tommy leans down to brush a kiss to its forehead. “It’s good to, to see you again, friend.”

The creature will always miss Gordon, but it leans into the smooch and dares to hope that this human won’t disappear. And indeed, he won’t: Tommy remains in the creature’s life as much as he can, through time travel issues and splitting cells and many, many deaths. They’ll be best friends for a long time to come.

As for me… I think it’s time I called the G-Man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: sad animal does not take care of itself; children in crappy foster care; a child considers putting a dying animal out of its misery; animals eating animals; mild body horror; hunger; loneliness.
> 
> 1\. haha. git gud, narrator.  
> 2\. look, i am like ALWAYS thinking about tommy's deperation in his line, "no! we, we need to understand!" about benrey's big speech. best friends?? i fucking. they. i. he!!!! ...i gotta go lie down, man.  
> 3\. spent a while like "ughhhh, how am i supposed to narrate the time traveling thing :(" before getting smacked in the face w the answer at literally 2am the other night and finishing this chapter in a rush  
> 4\. i'm likely going to wing some of the sweet voice stuff, but i'm certainly basing it off of nbenrey-real's [Speculative Sweet Voice Translation](https://cartoonsaint.tumblr.com/post/633176533860859905/speculative-sweet-voice-translation). i'm going with the interpretation that SV isn't a proper language, just a way of expressing emotions. (also i know coomer sometimes uses it but probably i am going to just I Do Not See It lmao. if wayne can do it so can i)  
> 5\. i can't believe i haven't mentioned this yet, but a HUGE inspiration for this fic is KogoDogo's [It Came From the Vents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178177)! i'll talk more about its sequel later when we get to human-shaped Benrey, but for now i wanted to recommend it if you're at all interested in a strange, squishy, eat-to-become Benrey :)  
> 6\. UP NEXT: the g-man is a professional who is just SO very good at his job, no really i swear
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: We met Tommy, who then met Benrey, who then/before that met Tommy who broke time travel rules to meet Benrey ahead of time and -- oh god. This is not supposed to be happening; the narrator is stressin. THIS TIME:  
> "I... agre- I'b- ...Benrey is a valuable employee here at Black Mesa!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

There are many different stances on the laws of narratemporality. We all have opinions on things like character arcs, plot building, foreshadowing and thematic motifs. Each narrator is its own; we learn the rules and break them as we see fit in order to better tell the story or the mood or the thesis.

Some narrators are even talented enough to break the most holy rule of storytelling (and, indeed, existence itself): that of _causality._ For these individuals, an event occurring is no guarantee that an event occurred. Time and effect are negligible — what happened and what didn’t happen are interchangeable in the service of the plot. For these skilled storytellers, time and reality twist.

I am not one of those narrators.

Honestly, I don’t even particularly like flashbacks; I tend to get bogged down in them and want to tell _everything,_ because isn’t all of it important? The slightest twitch of a stranger’s expression might have changed everything for a character. One tiny incident shifts a point of view, which is then shifted by another incident, and shifted again — how can I explain who and why someone really is if I can’t tell you everything? How can we ever know another when so much of their lived history is out of our reach, when their thoughts and feelings are inherently impossible to touch and know?

You see, I’m getting distracted again.

My point is this: I am an honest storyteller. I have a moderate amount of talent into which I have put a moderate amount of work. But once a scene has been set and told, _I do not have the ability to change its plot._

Tommy and that which will become Benrey have already met in the woods of Seattle. They will meet again a year later in Georgia, traveling along different timelines. I have already shown you; it is too late to change it. The rules have already been broken, though not by me.

So my options are thus:

  1. Scrap the story. Forget Benrey, forget Tommy, forget Gordon and even the G-Man himself. Sometimes stories just don’t work. (Maybe I’m just not ready to tell this one yet.)
  2. Let causality fall apart on its own. If it’s what the characters want, who am I to stop it? The story can twist and tear itself to unreadable pieces if it likes. It’s not like what I want for it matters.
  3. Send in the G-Man to do damage control. He was made, after all, to fix narrative holes; even if he can’t change what has already been told, perhaps he can alter the story’s path. Maybe he can stop things from falling further apart.



Alright, so putting it like that the answer is pretty obvious. The G-Man is here for this very purpose; even if he can’t do anything about the fact that Tommy has somehow gotten access to time travel in order to meet Benrey-to-be before he ought to have (or, before he _did?_ ...eh), he should be able to mitigate any worse outcomes. I’ll call him, he’ll sort it.

It’s just that it’s so _frustrating,_ you know? Maddening, almost. How the hell did this happen? I truly loathe not knowing things, and this is a pretty significant gap in my knowledge.

...Which I suppose I could always fix. The G-Man can’t change whatever occurred between these two meeting here in Seattle and their meeting in Georgia next year, so it’s not like there’d be any difference if we just, oh, _watched_ for a little while, right? It’d answer my — rather, it would answer _your_ questions. And really, what else is a narrator for?

Well! I believe that settles it. Let’s see, what were these kids doing last…?

That first time they properly interact, Tommy stays for the standard hour. Time stops and the train pulls up, its doors swinging open, and the creature’s ears droop. It remembers what this means.

Tommy stands and smiles wistfully down at his friend. He leans down to press another firm kiss to the creature’s head. “I’ll — I promise I’ll, I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says. “But! Before I go—”

The creature watches attentively as Tommy digs through his bag and comes up with a small glass vial filled with his own blood. He has prepared and brought a fresh one with him each day he’s visited, just in case that was the day that the creature would accept his presence. Now, he offers it to his new/old friend, smiling. “I, I know having a sample of someone’s DNA helps you keep track of them, and I, I. I hope you’ll, you’ll want to keep track of me?”

Uncertainty overtakes Tommy. He knows that the creature will meet and know him in the future, but maybe this is too soon for such a huge step? There are no books on the etiquette of giving one’s genetic material to a presumably alien super-adapter who will become your best friend. His hand twitches as he thinks of the soft lining of his coat, how comforting it would be to touch.

But the creature reaches out at once, exploring the vial with its hands and nose. It takes it from Tommy’s hands — he sucks in a breath, relieved — and then opens its mouth and swallows the vial whole, glass and all.

“You — you ate—!” Tommy’s breath stutters out of him in a shocked laugh. “You didn’t have to eat the whole thing! You, you drink it!”

The creature tilts its head at him, focused but clearly not understanding, and Tommy laughs again. “That’s okay! It, it seems like we both have a lot of learning to do? But we’ll do it,” he says, confidence surging. He double-checks that he has all of his items, then folds his long body in half to press another kiss to the creature’s head. It leans into him, earnest in its tenderness, and Tommy smiles as he pulls away. “Okay, I have to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

The creature watches him leave, feelings torn. It categorizes its newest set of DNA, metaphorically filing it beside Gordon’s as _nice, sometimes-provider, to be protected,_ and a myriad of other vague concepts that ultimately add up to: _friend._

And then the train is gone, time resumes, and the creature returns to its favorite tree to await its friend’s return. It feels settled in a way that it hasn’t since before Tommy’s train started coming, since before the weather turned, and, indeed, since before Gordon stopped visiting. Also, with the variety of eggs Tommy has provided, it is once again fat and healthy — not to mention smarter and more curious than ever before. So when it pokes at the collection of useable DNA it has, it starts to think… and has an idea.

The next day, the train arrives exactly on time. Tommy steps out, hands playing nervously with the lining of his pockets, and as the train pulls away he grips his hands into disappointed fists. There is no raccoon waiting at his spot.

“You knew it might not, not be easy,” he reassures himself, and squares his shoulders to walk over to his spot anyway —

Only for a strange cooing from behind him to catch his attention. He turns and there, revealed by the departing train, is an ostrich.

Tommy blinks twice in rapid succession. Ostriches are not native to northern Washington, nor are they optimized for living through a cold winter. This one is fairly small as well, barely half the size it ought to be, which can’t make things any easier for it. It eyes Tommy in return, its intelligent eyes glinting within the dark mask of feathers, as though waiting for something.

A grin splits Tommy’s face. He runs to meet the anomaly, heart soaring. “You, you were playing a prank on me!” he exclaims, and throws his arms around what must be the creature, which fluffs its feathers, pleased. “You hid behind the train, where you knew I couldn’t see you! And you changed your form to, to the one I gave you yesterday!” Tommy pulls back, admiring. “Look at you, you’re so smart already!” Tommy smooches its beak; the creature preens, delighted to be recognized and approved of. “I’m — oh, my friend, I’m so glad.”

One might expect that the repeated, time-travel-assisted meetings of a clever, determined human and an alien super-adapter would be momentous, charged, incredible… but the truth of the matter is, extraordinary though both individuals might be, they’re also quite young. The daily hour they spend together is less like a meeting and more like… well, a playdate.

Honestly, they just goof off in the woods.

The creature finds that Tommy is very different from Gordon. Where Gordon liked to be in control, Tommy is happy to follow the creature’s lead. Where Gordon was focused on explaining his own thoughts, Tommy listens and observes the creature instead. It’s not as though Gordon wasn’t also kind or patient; it’s just that Tommy already knows the creature, knows that it is intelligent and will only become moreso. He’s delighted to help guide it through its own self-discovery.

So Tommy helps the creature learn about itself. It learns that it likes to play games, to come up with tricks that will make its friend startle into laughter. It learns that no matter what form it uses, Tommy will always recognize it. It learns to play with its genetics on smaller levels, testing out octopus color-changing on squirrels’ shapes and feathers on snakes. It learns that while it does not mind being large, it prefers to be smaller than Tommy, so that he can press a kiss to its forehead more easily. It learns to respond by pressing its face to his cheek in a returned kiss. It learns it quite likes the color blue.

It also learns about being _nice._ Tommy winces when it starts catching food again, but not because it is a predator. “That method isn’t _efficient,_ ” Tommy protests. “You, your prey suffers like that — you have to kill it faster.”

Tommy knows a lot about biology and knows a lot about being kind; though it takes more than a week of trial and error for them to find a way to understand each other about this, eventually the creature gets it. When it does hunt, it does so as nicely as it can, and Tommy is pleased and proud.

“Do you want a name?” Tommy asks it one day.

The creature cocks its head at him, awaiting further explanation.

“Like, um, like I’m Tommy,” Tommy says.

“ _Tommy,_ ” the creature says with the voice of a parrot. Tommy grins.

“Freaky! Buh, but yeah. Do _you_ want one? I never, never thought to ask before.”

The creature considers this. “Bbbbb,” it finally replies, and Tommy laughs.

“Oh, okay! We’ll work on it,” he says, and comes with a new name for it every day thereafter. The creature likes this game, likes the attention, and likes rejecting every name Tommy gives it. It becomes an inside joke between the chronologically displaced human and the anomaly.

The first time Tommy sees the creature use its colorful psychic abilities — “o-oh, your sweet voice!!” — he becomes so loud and excited that the creature hesitates to use them again. Tommy has to apologize many times and bring the creature extra fancy eggs before it deigns to employ them once more, whereupon the two quickly become obsessed with figuring out how it can be adapted beyond the standard “blue to subdue.” Tommy and the creature end up singing together a lot, and the creature is thrilled when it finally works out how to express its emotions in that way.

“How about Walter?” Tommy says one day. The creature opens its mouth to let forth a series of colored orbs directly in his face. Tommy laughs, waving them away. “Orange to white like an autumn leaf on snow: _absolutely not, no way, man, just no._ G-got it.”

“Sodapop.” Pink out of red: _that’s so bad that I’m dead._

“Kathleen?” Purply-pink to something like honey: _I love you, bro, but that is_ not _funny._

“Scorpion! Like, we — we could do Scorpy for short?” Pretty pale blue like the egg of a bird: _This is too much, stop acting a turd._

They’re just two goofs, honestly.

The weather thaws. Tommy shows up on the train every day. He and the creature love each other dearly. Tommy has to be more careful as the summer begins and children start to play at the stream, but he never gets caught, and the creature knows well enough to hide all but its most subtle of differences when Tommy isn’t there.

Gordon doesn’t return, even with the warming seasons, but that’s okay. The creature can handle that, as long as it has Tommy.

Of course, one day Tommy arrives with shaking shoulders and a wet face and tries to explain that he can’t come back.

“I, I’m not even supposed to be using the trains like this,” he says as the creature presses its face to his cheek, distressed at his distress. It is still smaller than Tommy, but it is large enough to wrap itself around him with the coils of a snake and the softness of a rabbit’s hide. Tommy runs his hands along its fur, grateful. “And, and I don’t want my — I don’t want him to — I don’t want anyone to get in trouble,” he says weakly. “P-plus we’re coming up on when I meet you for the first time, and things could get really, _really_ messed up if I stayed. I have to go.”

Turquoise gem on a yellow canary: _Please stay. I don’t like this. This talk is too scary._

“You’ll see me again soon, I promise! You, you find me in only a few weeks. You won’t be away from me for long.”

A curious kind of purpley-blue: _You reassure me, but what about you?_

Tommy blinks twice rapidly. “O-oh, I, I — well, I needed you, when I was a kid. You helped me a lot. So, so we’ll still be together.”

The creature does not understand time travel, but it pays a lot of attention to Tommy’s feelings, and it knows there’s something else. It sings purpley-blue again, deeper and more intense. _What about_ you.

Tommy hiccups, startled into silence.

Then he smiles and kisses the crown of the creature’s head. “I, I’m working on it, I promise. I’m talking to my d— to the people I need to talk to. If all goes well, _I’ll_ see you very soon, too.”

And Tommy leaves. The creature returns to its tree, thinking hard. Tommy is gone, but Tommy said it will find him again soon. How?

It turns over the DNA from the vial of Tommy’s blood, considering. It has learned a lot about itself in the past few months, adapted its abilities and uncovered others. Perhaps…?

The Tommy of this time period is many miles away, impossible for even the most sensitive nose to detect, but locating a match for Tommy’s genetic material is less physical than metaphysical for the creature. It takes a full day and night of concentration, but eventually it finds where he must be.

Of course, this ability could be used to locate Gordon, as well. He’s much closer, just a few hours’ flight away. But Tommy told the creature that he needed it to find him, so it doesn’t even occur to the creature to look for its first friend. It just points itself in Tommy’s direction, changes its shape to a large flying bird that won’t get too many odd looks, and takes off.

We’ve seen what happens when at last the creature finds young Tommy. He’s curious, amazed, and spurred to talk to it and learn more about it. He’s brave and he’s nice.

The older Tommy claimed that, as a child, he had _needed_ the creature. But the creature finds that that isn’t quite true; without it, Thomas is certainly quieter. He keeps his emotions close to his chest, safe and protected from the many people in his life who don’t put in the effort to understand him. He is less happy.

With the creature beside him, hidden in plain sight as various animals that are only a little strange, Thomas slowly, shyly blooms.

But the creature thinks he didn’t really need _it_ — anything that put in the work could have known how wonderful Tommy could be. It frustrates the creature that it took so long for something to come along that would appreciate its dearest friend.

Which is why, when the tall man in suits starts to show up and watch Tommy from afar, the creature merely watches him right back — and, for the sake of its friend, it _hopes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: brief hopelessness; non-graphic blood-drinking (haha, this is a weird fic); non-graphic talk about killing animals.
> 
> 1\. the narrator and the meta are, like, face-scorchingly self-indulgent, BUT: i’m writing this for my own joy! hlvrai is already set up for meta nonsense! it’s just 500 words out of a much longer story! so if it’s not to your taste, i hope you’ll forgive me; as it is, i’m really glad folks have been along for the ride thus far :D  
> 2\. there ARE rules for what the narrator is allowed to affect, observe, and know-ahead-of-time but i figure just telling u straight away would be boring ;) hopefully i’ll be able to keep things consistent enough that they’ll be clear in-text, but if anything confuses u feel free to ask about it and i’ll try to clear it up!  
> 3\. i forgot to mention last time, but the concept of tommy being chronologically displaced due to the gman comes from sporesgalaxy [HERE](https://cartoonsaint.tumblr.com/post/625983889716953088/mysteriie-mysteriie-thought-tommy-doesnt-say). they also have a wonderful [COMIC](https://cartoonsaint.tumblr.com/post/625928773361106944/i-think-about-tommy-mr-coolatta-lore-every) about tommy adoption. and here’s an [ADDITIONAL COMIC](https://cartoonsaint.tumblr.com/post/634649547492245504) on the same topic from tubeon.  
> 4\. i thought there'd be more g-man this chapter! i got caught up in tommy and benrey friendship bc CLUTCHES CHEST i LOVE them ;-;  
> 5\. NEXT TIME: the g-man and (at least!) one strange youngling >:3
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: Tommy & Benrey have time-breaking friendship ;-; THIS TIME:  
> “My… progeny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

The G-Man is a dedicated professional. He has a perfect record of eliminating anomalies and smoothing over the accidents of intereality that put his home dimension at risk. He cares about his planet, his universe, and his reality — not just because they are his, but because he has seen so much of them and found none of it lacking. He wants for nothing but his dimension’s protection.

In order to protect, he finds it best to be separate. But even the coldest salaryman, devoted to his work above all else, may long for more. As much as the G-Man has practiced pushing away his old humanity, it has the stubborn habit of sticking around.

He indulges it with solitary walks through Earth’s most beautiful natural spots, with people-watching from unreachable rooftops, with the occasional sweet treat alone in a cafe or restaurant. Even as he wonders whether he should have grown past these things by now, he can't help himself. His humanity — his wants, his emotions, his compassion— these are a part of him, a part he will never be able to completely excise… no matter how much he thinks he should, nor how much he sometimes _wants_ to.

For instance, his job gives him the insight to recognize that being bored or frustrated is human and illogical. He has all the time in the universe! And yet…

The G-Man narrows his eyes at the time-frozen figures before him. The boy is alone but for the plain-looking snake wrapped around his wrist, which means he isn’t hiding his emotions: a smile threatens to split his face, and his free hand has been caught in excited mid-flutter. It is a pleasant scene, but one the G-Man can’t help but find irritating.

It’s been two months since his employer (haha hey, that’s me!) called him into stasis to tell him to keep an eye on the creature that had attached itself to a child by the name of Thomas; two months of watching and waiting, expecting danger at any moment; two months of observing the extremely quiet boy and his series of animals.

Two months of _nothing._ The most interesting thing to have happened is the presence of the animals, but even that has been frustrating.

One afternoon, the child carries a fat grey rat on his shoulder. That night, a pigeon nestles beside him to sleep. The next day, he goofs off with a small raccoon behind the house. It seems that every time the G-Man dares to rest his eyes or look away for even a moment, a different type of creature is accompanying the young boy — and he just can’t figure out how the animals _keep swapping out._

Why are there so many? Where do they come from? How on earth did this young boy befriend _so many_ animals, and why are they so fast?? It defies logic, and the G-Man does not like it.

The situation is so mind-bending that a number of times he's even stopped time in an effort to catch them, to no avail. He’s even had the insane thought that the unremarkable animals might have moved _during time stops,_ which is obviously impossible (or at least highly unlikely — he’s only seen it once before, after all). Clearly this assignment is getting to him.

There's also the fact that his employers merely told him, “oh, just keep an eye on the creature following around this child,” with no further instructions. There was no indication he’d have to figure out _which_ of the many creatures were his target. Is he truly expected to just keep watching and waiting, or should he somehow know which of the many creatures are a potential danger? Do his employers have any idea of the stress they put him under, giving vague instructions about something that could destroy the dimension he calls home? Do they even care about this place like he does?

(I should mention — obviously I care! It just didn’t occur to me that the professional who has been doing this for an unfathomable amount of time would need help figuring out that the “many creatures” are just _one,_ dude. Honestly, there’s only room in this professional relationship for one loveable-but-kind-of-oblivious character, and I’m pretty sure I’ve already got that covered.

Plus, some of the things the G-Man is thinking about his employers are, hm… not very charitable. I might have to reconsider his holiday bonus.)

The G-Man presses his long fingers to his temples, fighting back a headache. He considers the boy and his current beast. Two months, and he still knows next to nothing about his target.

Perhaps it is time to try a different approach.

The woman who answers the door when time resumes is frazzled and nervous at his appearance, but she does as he asks. The G-Man flexes his long fingers around the handle of his briefcase as he waits in the messy living room, eyeing the evidence of too many children with not enough supervision and reminding himself that he is not here to pass judgment on this.

By the time the woman returns, he has schooled his expression into something neutral. She smiles hastily and bends to whisper into her ward’s ear.

The child that the G-Man has been following for two months shies away from her touch but otherwise holds himself very, very still. From within a pocket of his ill-fitting shorts, the glint of an eye lets the G-Man know he is being watched by one of the boy’s frustrating animal companions. The boy himself regards the G-Man with adult-like solemnity as his guardian tries to speak to him, eyes darting around the G-Man’s suit, shoes, and hair before settling on his briefcase.

At last, the woman falls silent and the boy steps forward. In a very quiet voice, the boy politely says, “Hello, Mr. The-G-Man. My name is Thomas.”

“Good. Afternoon… Young Thomas.” The boy doesn’t offer a hand, so the G-Man merely inclines his head in greeting. “I. Would like, to… Speak. With you. We could go to… a. Restaurant, perhaps? Hm? Would that. Be… amenable to you, Mr. Thomas?”

Thomas doesn’t even blink at the G-Man’s stilted speech or form of address. He stands there, stone-still, with one hand in the same pocket as his creature of the day, for long enough that his caretaker opens her mouth to say something — “A-alright. Where, um, where — where will we go?”

The G-Man nods, pleased. “That is. For you, to decide.”

“...Can we go to Dunkin’ Donuts?”

They go to Dunkin’ Donuts. After the G-Man signs some papers for the boy’s guardian, he and Thomas walk there in shared silence. The child takes fifteen whole minutes looking over the menu before quietly requesting a strawberry coolatta and a strawberry-frosted donut with star-shaped rainbow sprinkles. The G-Man orders these, a small black coffee, and a chocolate donut for himself. They collect their items and sit together in a tiny booth, Thomas hunched over to make himself even smaller than he already is.

At last, the G-Man folds his long fingers together on the table. Thomas, taking very small bites of his donut, watches in silence. It is quite unlike the boisterous behavior the G-Man has observed from him time and time again.

This has the G-Man hesitate. He has seen much of the boy’s actions over the past two months; when Thomas is alone or with one of his animal friends, he is loud, active, and relaxed. He only acts this way amongst those he is uncomfortable with. The G-Man is making him uneasy.

Distress, unusual and uncomfortable, squeezes his lungs; he clears his throat. He is not accustomed to interacting with people much these days, much less a shy child whose needs have already been repeatedly disregarded by the adults in his life — how can he achieve his goal of learning more about which of the animals following Thomas is dangerous, when he’s not even certain how to talk to the boy?

“Are you, ah. En...joying your. Dunkin?” the G-Man asks weakly.

Thomas doesn’t blink. “Yeah,” he quietly acknowledges.

“That. That’s good,” the G-Man says. “I am… happy to hear it.”

Thomas doesn’t say anything.

“I did not… know,” the G-Man ventures, “that Dunkin. Donuts. Was considered… a restaurant. It is… a lovely establish. Ment.”

Thomas places down his coolatta with extreme care, so extreme that it does not make a noise at all against the table. “It is,” he says, voice small.

They continue picking at their donuts in silence. Even as he appreciates the contrast between his bitter coffee and chocolate pastry, the G-Man despairs at his social abilities. Thomas keeps his eyes down and one hand always beneath the table.

At last the G-Man refolds his hands, clears his throat again. He has a job to do; his feelings _cannot_ enter into it. “Young Mr. Thomas. I have called you here today… to discuss. An important matter.” The boy sets down the remains of his donut, clearly listening, even as his eyes remain on the G-Man’s hands. “My… empl— uhm, I. _I_ have, concerns. About your… friends.”

If anything, the boy becomes even stiller. The G-Man winces.

“Y-your, ah, your — your animal. Friends,” he tries, hopeful — but he catches the minutest twitch of Thomas’s shoulder, like the hand beneath the table has suddenly tensed, and he knows he’s misstepped. “Rather, the — it’s just. That they, they, uh—” he’s messing this up, _he’s messing this up —_ “I know you, you have many, but. One, of them — could be… ah… Dangerous?”

Silence rings between them. At the register, someone orders a dozen donuts. The G-Man, feeling awkward and foolish in a way he is no longer accustomed to, takes a long sip of his coffee. Perhaps he should rewind time and try this meeting again —

But then Thomas clears his throat, and the G-Man stills.

The boy raises both small hands to the table and neatly folds them together. He straightens his back and draws his gaze up to the G-Man’s, revealing eyes so dark a brown that they’re nearly black. The G-Man startles to see them so close outside of a time stop, their color unaffected by the cyan shade of this abilities.

Though the boy’s expression remains fairly closed-off, there exists within it a flash of anger that shocks the man. Over all this time observing the child and his playmates, he’s never seen anything close to this level of distaste.

“Muh, Mr. The-G-Man,” the boy starts, his voice firm and loud, “with all, uh, all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The G-Man blinks twice, slowly. He can’t look away from young Thomas’s hard eyes, even when a furred face pokes out from the boy’s lap. It stares at him as well, gaze more watchful than Thomas’s near-glare.

“My friend — my, my _friends,_ ” the boy self-corrects, “aren’t, they’re not — I am not in _any_ danger,” he says firmly. “And even if I were, it wouldn’t be from them. And I would still — still stay, still _protect_ my friend — friends. Be, because they, because _I know them._ They’re good, and unique, and even if they’re small they’re important.” Thomas frowns openly, dark eyes flashing with determination. “I would do anything for them. I, I don’t know who you are, but I — but we don’t need your, need anything from you. Thank you.”

He unfolds his small hands, snatches up his strawberry coolatta, and takes a long, loud, extremely obnoxious _slurp_ before breaking eye contact to glare out the window.

The animal in the boy’s lap (a small raccoon, some part of the G-Man notes) presses its face to Thomas’s cheek briefly before retreating back almost out of view, its ears and eyes the only things visible from across the table. As Thomas gulps down his drink, the animal watches the G-Man for his reaction.

Mostly, he’s stunned. No one has spoken to him like this in a long time, much less a child — indeed, he wasn’t even aware they could. And what the boy said, his devotion to his friend, it feels… well. The G-Man had quite forgotten that others might also feel strongly about protecting that which is important to them.

He blinks twice slowly, processing, as Thomas finishes his drink and stands. The raccoon has disappeared, likely replaced with some other animal that fits more easily in Thomas’s pocket. When the boy leaves without a backward glance, the G-Man has no choice but to follow.

Their walk back to the foster home is silent. Thomas has once more wiped any expression from his face, appearing neutral and unruffled. Meanwhile, the G-Man keeps sneaking baffled looks at the boy, unnerved by his control and the fact that his reaction to potential danger was not to help himself, but to try to protect something else. That kind of devotion to something else… it’s familiar, like lonely walks through Earth’s natural beauty, like people-watching from out of reach, like eating something sweet alone.

At the door to Thomas’s foster home, the G-Man gathers his nerve. “It was… Good. To speak with you, young. Thomas.”

“Nice to meet you,” Thomas says shortly, and opens the door. A snake pokes its head out from his pocket as he walks away, eyes glittering as it watches the G-Man until Thomas turns the corner and disappears.

“...Well! He is an odd one.”

Beside the G-Man, the woman from earlier sidles up. Her expression is sympathetic. “I hope it went alright anyways.”

“...Yes,” the G-Man says at last. “It was… hm. I learned. Something.”

She smiles, surprised. “So then you’re still interested?”

“...Interested?”

“In adopting him.”

“In—” the G-Man sputters, nearly dropping his briefcase in surprise. “ _Adoption_??”

The woman’s smile fades. “Of course. That’s why you wanted to speak with him, isn’t it?”

Adoption? _Adoption?_ Hang on — G-Man’s thoughts be damned, now _I’m_ reacting, because — because wait a minute. This couldn’t possibly be how Tommy — and the trains—?

“Would you — please ex. Cuse me, for. A moment,” the G-Man says hastily.

“Um, of course,” the woman starts. “Take as much time—”

The G-Man pulls up a time-stop. He stands there for a moment, heart beating more rapidly than it has in a long time.

Then he kneels and opens his briefcase, pulling out the files from Wikipedia on adoption. He reads through them, focused even as his hands tremble — and then he pulls out more files, on Child development, on Parenting, on Family. He goes deeper, reading all the relevant files from Secret Wikipedia, then Even Secreter Wikipedia, anxiety gradually giving way to understanding.

He puts the Wikipedias away and locks his briefcase. He considers the young child with whom he spent the last time-passing hour. He thinks of the boy’s determination, and his closed-off expression, and how easily he laughs when he thinks no one is around but his animal friends. He wonders about what the boy needs, and what the G-Man himself could provide.

He thinks he might like to provide for him. He thinks he might do an alright job. He thinks that maybe it’s time he shared his life again, that maybe he ought to let himself indulge in being human.

And lastly — _most importantly,_ too — he considers his employers, and whether this is something they would be alright with —

Only to dismiss us, completely and immediately. Our concerns don’t lie with the small and simple, he rationalizes, but with the broad — as long as he does his job, why should it matter how he spends his extra time?

…Oh, G-Man. Perhaps we haven’t been as kind to you as we should have.

The G-Man stands once more and neatly brushes down his suit. He blinks twice, slowly, running through it all. Then he drops the time-stop.

“—as you need,” the woman finishes.

“Excellent,” the G-Man says, folding his long fingers together. “Let us discuss. The next… steps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: some loneliness; brief reference to over-burdened foster parents; child hiding how he feels; eating; awkward conversations; mild tension/conflict between adult and child. Lmk if there’s anything i missed!
> 
> 1\. it’s 3am, i haven’t read this over, but it’s my bday and i wanted to post this so! i hope it’s clear that the G-Man hasn’t realized that all of the animals are one animal, but lmk if not and i’ll check it over in a few days and fix it. extra goofiness, melodrama, and grammar mistakes are also probable, to which i say… my b.  
> 2\. before this chapter the only thought i’d rly given to g-man’s personality was [THIS POST](https://doctormemes.tumblr.com/post/636913827833937920/pterodactuality-i-love-giant-squid) (but about benrey, not squids lmao). it came easier when i decided his core was love :) he is an awkward man who devotes himself utterly to what he sees as important (and doesn’t do well when things don’t go according to plan). also i mean this in the best possible way, but he is a loser <3  
> 3\. the main difference between tommy and g-man is that the g-man is less (for lack of a more concise cultural phrase) Slytherin, lol: tommy prefers to hold the cards, is willing to lie for his friends, has within him a well of determination. altho he is an adult, when it comes to Managing People the g-man is almost innocent in comparison. these two’ll come to care for each other a lot :]  
> 4\. this chapter rly had me thinkin about a His Dark Materials au where benrey is tommy’s daemon and they end up in a QPP w gordon... maybe bubby w an enormous intimidating vulture who’s a mostly a sweetie (“those bald fucks”)... Black Mesa practicing intercision... idk. another thing i’m forbidden from thinking about so i don’t end up writing thousands of words for it lmao  
> 5\. the backstory is fun but i want so much to get to black mesa. pleeeeease, it’s gonna be so fun (for me, anyway). i think we need another chapter or two til we get there, but soon!!  
> 6\. NEXT TIME: like all teenagers, Tommy experiments w asking for forgiveness rather than permission.
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: the G-Man met Tommy, who is accompanied by what he assumes are many different animals. the meeting goes objectively poorly but the G-Man is impressed with the boy’s bravery and determination. THIS TIME:  
> “NO! NO! Let him- Le- Let— We need to understand!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

When Tommy hears that the G-Man wants to adopt him, he stays so silent for so long that his guardian has to repeat herself. Tommy nods minutely, mind going a million miles an hour, and politely excuses himself. He walks with calm, carefully measured steps up to the roof.

The creature that will become Benrey, presently in the shape of an improbably dense grey rat, pokes its head out of Tommy’s pocket and watches for the tell-tale sheen of turquoise that indicates a time-stop. There is none between their departure from the stuffy room and their arrival at the fenced-in roof; without it, the G-Man could not have left the foyer to get to a higher place. There’s no risk of them being seen.

So when Tommy conscientiously closes the door behind him, the creature steps out of his pocket and falls into a shape designed specifically for its friend — warm-blooded, soft rabbit’s fur, big enough to weigh him down — with some concessions for its preferences as well — the ever-present raccoon’s mask, grey coloring with a little bit of blue iridescence, and not quite bigger than Tommy himself. Tommy, who over the past few months has become very used to this behavior, catches the creature up in his arms immediately and muffles a scream into its fur.

“He — he — he—! He thinks — he wants to—” Tommy has to take a breath and snarl into the creature’s chest again. It hums blue and violet at him, soothing and sympathetic. “You’re  _ not  _ dangerous!!” he finally shouts, muffled by a faceful of soft fur. “You, you’re the nicest — the best — and he’s — he  _ sucks shit _ .”

Tommy, released from the expectation of propriety and his own strict self-control, squeezes the creature’s fur in his fists and screams and rants as loudly and as furiously as he wants. He has spent so much of his young life making himself still and quiet for the sake of others, being something he’s not so that others won’t be bothered or scold him; the creature has been his first and only experience with something that delighted in his noise and oddities, strong emotional responses and volume and energy-burning ticks and all. The G-Man’s presence, his potential adoption and thus controlling hand, puts Tommy’s most important friend and relationship at risk, and Tommy — Tommy is  _ scared. _

“I  _ hate  _ him,” he announces. “I’ll never go with him! I’d rather — I’d rather eat a, a hundred slugs! He can go, uh, he can go shit himself!” Tommy searches for more swears. “He’s — he’s an  _ ass-hoe. _ ”

The creature is barely listening. It is, honestly, thinking about Froot Loops.

Specifically a Froot Loop-related incident a few weeks ago, wherein Tommy’s guardians had shelled out the big bucks for a few boxes of name-brand cereal as a treat for the kids they looked after. Tommy had taken his portion and run off so he and the creature could share in privacy, but another child had caught sight of him giving his cereal to an apparently wild crow and complained that Tommy was being wasteful, and he should give them to her instead.

Rather than meekly giving in as he usually did when confronted, Tommy had refused. His peer had been displeased; things had quickly gotten physical. Before the creature could step in ( _ protect,  _ the instincts it had created for itself hissed,  _ protect! _ ), Tommy had shoved back and  _ screamed.  _ He’d been angry before, of course, but he’d always kept it bottled up — now he let loose, hitting and yelling back, just for the sake of the creature.

His guardians hadn’t known how to react. Rather than listening and understanding they had shouted at him, shouted Tommy down until he was once more quiet, apparently calm, tightly holding his emotions close to his chest. He’d been grounded for a week. The girl had been as well, of course, but Tommy hadn’t really gotten in trouble before this, not in a long time, and his guardians had been firm about their disappointment in him when he was usually  _ such a nice, quiet boy. _

In the Dunkin Donuts, Tommy had gotten angry at the G-Man. He hadn’t yelled, but the fact that he’d expressed anger, that he’d felt it at all, would not have been acceptable to his overworked guardians. Both Tommy and the creature had rather expected to be disciplined for it.

But no — the G-Man had gone quiet, and listened, and not pushed the subject. He had let Tommy lead them back to the foster home. And now, even having seen Tommy express himself, he is apparently still interested in caring for him.

Right now, Tommy still rants into the creature’s fur. It takes a moment to look at him, wondering vaguely about how much smaller he looks compared to when they met, how the animals the creature eats were once small as well, and how those animals spent their early lives with adults of their own species. It thinks about how much it truly loves its best friend.

The creature thinks that the G-Man could be good for Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t like the G-Man because he said the creature was dangerous. Tommy thinks this isn't true because the creature has never indicated that it could be.

Hesitant, gentle, it bonks its head against his cheek and hums a few notes of indigo (for  _ shut up, bro _ ). Tommy, eyes still wet, squints up at it. The creature takes one last look at its friend’s kind, dark eyes.

Wait, is it going to—?  _ Shit — _

Its attack is quick, a flash of too many razor-sharp teeth and a startled cry as Tommy’s arm is slashed open. Shocked, Tommy releases the creature — it leaps away, uses raccoon-like hands to open the door’s roof and borrows the vocal cords of a parrot to mimic Tommy’s cry, and before long the thunder of adults’ footsteps approach from below.

“Why—?” The creature whips around. Tommy’s hand is clasped to the bleeding wound of his arm, eyes wide as he gapes at his friend. “I don’t — I don’t understand?”

The creature may generally understand what its friend says, but it cannot actually speak a human language yet. It would use its sweet voice, but it cannot lie about what it’s feeling, and the love it wants to tell Tommy would just confuse him.

So it just looks at him for a long moment. Then it leaps off the roof and shifts into a boring, nondescript pigeon, one that doesn’t even have the telltale blue iridescence of which it is so fond, and wings away.

Tommy runs to the side of the roof, wound forgotten as he shoves his tears away with a bloody hand, but before he can trace the creature’s path the adults arrive. His guardian pulls him back, yelling in worry, and in his distress he yells back at her; just behind, the G-Man observes the wound and the lack of animal companion. He connects the dots.

“Perhaps you should. Locate, a… first aid. Kit?” he says, as smoothly as he’s able.

“Oh! Yes, I — Thomas, stay right there—” She flees down the steps, a woman on a mission, and Tommy and the G-Man are left alone on the roof.

The G-Man steps closer and Tommy holds his tongue, anger burning in him alongside the pain and confusion, but the man kneels at a distance and doesn’t reach for him. Tommy schools his expression back into mildness and turns away to search for signs of his friend — it’s hurt him, yes, but Tommy can ignore the pain for now if it means tracking the creature down so they can  _ talk.  _ Why would it suddenly attack like that, especially when they were just talking about how it wasn’t dangerous? He needs to find it, he needs to understand—

The G-Man speaks up, his voice a soft distraction. “Would you… like me to, heal you?”

Tommy’s first impulse is to snap at him, because this wouldn’t have happened if the man hadn’t showed up in the first place, but as always he holds his tongue. Then he registers what has been said. “What?”

“I can… hm,  _ undo. _ Your injury.”

Tommy stares directly at the G-Man, thrown. “You, you, uh…” It doesn’t even occur to Tommy to deny the man’s abilities; he’s seen stranger things in his best friend, after all. “...Aren’t you gonna tell me you, that you told me so? About my friend — my friends being, um. Dangerous?”

The G-Man blinks twice, processing. “...No.”

“Oh.”

“May I?” He extends a hand, waiting for Tommy’s permission.

The boy hesitates, glancing back over his shoulder at the edge of the roof, but there’s hardly anything there. He looks back, shoulders hunching, and shuffles forward. “Um. Okay.”

Cyan light shines through the seal of the G-Man’s briefcase as he reaches forward, the same light glowing around his fingertips. He passes his hand over Tommy’s bleeding arm and the wounds vanish before Tommy’s widening eyes, exactly like they had never happened at all. The G-Man pulls back respectfully, his creased brow easing now that the deed is undone. Tommy stares.

“Your briefcase…” Part of Tommy’s mind stays focused on the creature, the fact that it’s fled and he needs to find it, but in the end he is still a seven year old child with a burning curiosity. “Are you like Sailor Moon?”

“Er,” says the G-Man. “Um, I. One moment—”

He pauses time and frantically unclasps his briefcase, searching out the Wikipedia articles on Sailor Moon. He doesn’t notice that of the group of pigeons frozen on a nearby telephone wire, one tilts its head to get a better view of his behavior.

Stuffing the printouts away, the G-Man at last lets time resume. “...Yes,” he says to the boy before him. “I suppose, with my Item of Power, I. Am a little bit, like… Sailor. Moon.”

Tommy rubs a hand attentively along his now-unwounded arm, enforced stillness forgotten for the mystery before him. “Can I write a paper on you?” he asks bluntly. 

The G-Man’s long limbs twitch in surprise, but he huffs out a little laugh. “I don’t think—”

“Why not? I promise I won’t write down anything bad,” Tommy presses. “I, I’m good at remembering stuff — I make them rhyme and then I can, then I know them. No one would read my notes cause, uh, I wouldn’t have any.”

“Ah, well, that still—”

“I can’t publish anything til I’m older anyways, so it can stay secret for a while. I’m good at keeping secrets.” Unblinking, he watches the G-Man, who fights the urge to fiddle anxiously with his tie. “I just wanna know.”

“Well, um, you see, I can’t — I’m actually not supposed to—” The G-Man takes a deep breath, thinking as quickly as he’s able. It’s… not very fast. “Ah, Thomas, I. Cannot share… the secrets of my employers with. Those who, aren’t… family?”

Tommy doesn’t blink. “So you’re working for someone?” The G-Man sucks in a breath. Idiot. “Or — some _ thing _ ? The things that gave you your, your item of, uh. Your bag?”

“Er—”

“Are they the ones that said my friend was dangerous?”

Tommy doesn’t look away. The G-Man does, and thus misses when Tommy’s eyes narrow, his brilliant brain working away at the problems presented to him. He flicks his eyes towards the telephone wire of pigeons, each of them as plain and boring as the next, and thinks.

“...Thomas,” the G-Man finally says, “you must understand—”

“I don’t like you,” Tommy says plainly. The G-Man winces — ha, you jerk. “And I, uh, I don’t like your employers either.” Ah. Ouch. “But, um. If you… if you leave my friend alone then you can, then I can — then I’ll let you adopt me.”

Really?

“Really?” the G-Man says, just as surprised. Tommy nods, determination obvious in the set of his jaw.

The G-Man isn’t allowed to just  _ not complete  _ a job. Once he’s accepted a, hm, a  _ quest _ I suppose, he’s on the hook until it’s done. But he can take other jobs in the meantime, from other individual employers, and the first employer can’t say shit about it. It’s video game logic, you see? Multiple quests, vague timelines, get it done when one needs the money or the power-up or the glory of 100%ing the game.

And, unfortunately, due to a loophole in the code of the universe, after giving a quest an employer cannot contact the G-Man until it has been completed. If the G-Man decides to just… put off the quest indefinitely, there’s not technically anything I can do about it. And the G-Man may not be a particularly smart man, but with enough time even he can follow a thought through to its logical conclusion… and one of his job benefits is having all the time in the world.

“Yes,” the G-Man says. “If that is the price… I will leave. Your friends, alone.”

Yeah. That’s kinda what I thought he’d say.

Tommy nods and, in a direct mirror of their first meeting, extends his hand towards the G-Man. The tall man blinks twice before a smile breaks over his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes and making his whole countenance seem much kinder, much more like a human being. Tommy relaxes a little as they shake hands.

Then he steals his hand back and turns away. “Okay. Can you, uh. Can you go now?”

“Right,” says the G-Man. “I’ll just—”

He flees down the stairs, off to deal with Tommy’s guardian. Tommy listens for the door’s creak and thump, rubbing drying blood between his fingers and gazing out at the various lifeforms visible from the roof.

There’s a few trees, various bushes, probably mold and fungi galore. He can see birds, rats, a cat down the street, and a couple of dogs resting on porches. There’s more, he knows, invisible to his eyes or hiding in plain sight. He clears his throat — it’s tight after all the crying and yelling of the past fifteen minutes, and he wants to be heard.

“Um,” he says, as loudly as he can without yelling. “I don’t — I don’t think I understand, completely? But you’re, you’re my friend. And I guess you’re also dangerous, but. It’s okay.” He waits, but the only sound is that of cars passing by below. “...So I’ll keep him away from you, okay? I’ll make sure you’re safe. And don’t, don’t feel bad about — um, it’s okay. I forgive you.”

On a window ledge directly beneath Tommy, out of his sight, a pigeon stays very still and listens very carefully.

“...But I still think he sucks shit,” Tommy announces, and the pigeon has to fly off in a burst of feathers so that it can laugh up a bout of green sweet voice in private.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: children making themselves quiet to fit in; unfair parents; friends physically harming friends; blood and non-graphic injury; some kinda funky manipulation between an adult and a child, but the child has the upper hand the whole time.
> 
> 1\. narrator, babe? do u kno ur kinda being a dick to the g-man? babe r ur emotions about the creature maybe interfering w ur desire for the g-man to do his job? babe? babe r u maybe taking ur confusion out on the wrong person? huh? babe?  
>  2\. tommy, a spooky 7yo with blood on his face: fine. we can be a family, but only so i can protect a potentially world-ending anomaly and also study you more easily. // g-man: *fist pumps in silent victory*  
>  3\. Benrey has always been more than willing to sacrifice himself for his friends. it’ll take til after the nihilanth/boss fight for them to finally have a conversation with him about his shitty self-worth :/  
>  4\. lots of families are created through foster and adoption which ;-; <3!!! but though tommy’s foster parents mean well, they are trying to take care of more kids than they‘re equipped for. neurodivergent kids (esp quiet ones!) tend to fall through the cracks — that’s a general issue, not one specific to foster care, and i just wanted to clarify!  
>  5\. i keep being wrong about what the next chapter will be about bc scenes that were meant to be short end up being too much fun :D NEXT TIME we’ll get to Tommy Time Travels, probably. we’ll find out together! :]
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: Benrey split with young Tommy in an effort to improve Tommy’s life; reluctantly, Tommy agreed to the G-Man’s proposal of adoption. THIS TIME:  
> “They let me pick my first… my ow— my— my last name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

It takes until the day Tommy is officially adopted for him to finally accept that his friend is going to keep its distance indefinitely. Even without the telltale raccoon-like mask and blue iridescence, the creature is a little too odd to pass as completely normal, so Tommy’s fairly certain he’s spotted it a number of times. Although it won’t allow him to get close, Tommy’s tried repeatedly to explain to any animal that sticks around long enough that he and the G-Man have an agreement, that the creature is safe, that they can still be friends. He’s gotten the message across as well as he can.

In the future, Tommy will be an absolute realist: logic dictates that observed data begets truth — whether or not that truth is what one wants — and he is nothing if not a scientist. But right now, he is a child.

So when he has packed up his meager possessions and bid polite farewells to his foster family and stands with his colorful new bag beside the G-Man at the train station that will take him to his new home, Tommy holds out hope that the creature will appear at the last minute and come with him. It was his family before the G-Man ever entered the picture, after all, and his concern for it squirms in his gut. What if the creature gets hungry and eats someone’s dog? What if it comes up with a goofy prank, with whom will it share? Who will kiss its forehead when it snuggles up to go to bed? Who will love it and appreciate it, strangeness and all?

The G-Man, I’m surprised to admit, notices the boy’s hidden anxiety and deduces its source. He waits as long as he can, hoping to give the boy some closure, but with each passing moment it seems crueler to hold out hope than face reality. At last, he lets out a long breath and calls up a time-stop.

The world goes chlorine-blue and absolutely  _ stops.  _ Internally, Tommy gasps — externally, he fights to keep his breathing even. With measured movement, he gazes around the frozen world, taking in the suspended birds and wind-swept litter and stock-still people all turned conveniently away from the tall man and the little boy. The only movement comes from down the tracks, where a beat-up set of train cars rattle along without the use of an engine and at last come to a stop before them.

“Thomas,” the G-Man intones gently. “It is… time.”

It takes a moment to get his legs working again, but Tommy obediently steps onto the train. His heart beats painfully as the doors close, understanding that with time stopped it must be too late for his friend to say goodbye —

But out the window, just as they’re pulling away, something moves. Tommy forgets to contain himself as he leaps to the window, drawing the G-Man’s attention, and together they watch a fat raccoon hop down from beneath an awning and climb up a nearby bench. It perches there and watches the train depart, eyes locked with Tommy’s, until they are out of sight.

The G-Man gapes. In all his time on the job, he’s only ever seen one other creature be unaffected by a time stop, and that thing was a monster that could borrow forms and morph shapes at will. This creature is Tommy’s friend — or one of them, the G-Man assumes, given that they all seem to come in different shapes… The connection is right there; surely he will—?

But no. The G-Man’s attention is drawn by the unmasked emotion on Tommy’s face; that is his priority.

Despite the danger, despite all he doesn’t know, he offers genuinely: “Would you like. To go… back?”

Tommy’s attention surges towards him, suspicious and calculating. The G-Man winces at the depth of feeling there for such a young boy — but then those dark, raging currents smooth out, the rapid waters beneath them once more hidden by an apparently unbothered surface, and that’s when the G-Man truly feels ill at ease. He does not want Tommy to have to quiet himself anymore.

“...No,” Tommy says, and sits politely back down on a train seat, hands stuffed in his pockets. “It’s fine.”

“...You, ah. Did you know,” the G-Man says, stumbling, “that, ah. Most everything cannot move. During one of my, time. Stops?” Tommy looks at him out of the corner of his eye, curious despite himself; the G-Man feels hope surge. “I could show — you if, you would, ah, like? Where — and  _ when  _ — would you. Prefer to, hm. Go?”

“...Anywhen?” Tommy says slowly. “Your ab-abili— your powers use time?”

“Yes,” the G-Man says, nearly holding his breath for hope.

Tommy looks out the train window into the void, silent for long enough that the G-Man starts to settle back in disappointment, before at last Tommy quietly clears his throat. “Could we, um. Could we see the dinosaurs?”

They go see the dinosaurs.

First they drop everything off at the home which is new to both of them. The G-Man has never had need of a space before this, but he knows stability is important for children’s development and although his hand in creating it makes it necessarily a bit  _ un _ stable — particularly gravity, which in some rooms works sideways — it will do. He lets Tommy pick which locations and time periods each of the windows displays and, though opening the door to the porch reveals that they’re located in a total void, at least there’s enough room for a swing, a small grill, and a few flower pots.

Tommy takes it in quietly, marveling more at having his own room with a door he can lock than the reality-bending nature of his new home. There are plenty of blankets, at least, and the lunch the G-Man prepares (mashed chickpeas and boiled egg on soft yellow bread with sweet honey and apple slices on the side) is mild enough not to bother Tommy’s taste buds too much. It’s… well, it’s not bad. Fine, even.

The dinosaurs, on the other hand, are  _ fantastic.  _ So is seeing early mammals, observing mammoths and people alike cross the slim land bridge between continents, and watching in slow motion as an extinct flower bud unfurls. When the G-Man takes them to see the first fish that crawled up onto land, Tommy forgets himself completely and laughs out loud in honest delight. The G-Man surreptitiously clutches a hand to his chest, shocked by the depth of his own gratitude to simply hear the boy laugh. He swears to himself he’ll do what it takes to nurture that laugh, to encourage Thomas’s happiness.

But for now the G-Man is inexperienced with children, with the joy of sharing his life, with Tommy himself. He doesn’t catch the signs of fatigue and overstimulation until Tommy is once more blank-faced and nearly unresponsive. He misreads this as disinterest, and doubles down on showing off more and more interesting things — but Tommy merely withdraws further, becoming quieter and more detached.

It’s obvious, and in my opinion takes the G-Man entirely too long to notice. Honestly, he should have known better. I don’t know why he thought he could do this. 

Eventually the G-Man catches on. He whisks Tommy back to the house they now share and plants him on the couch, spreading a heavy blanket over the boy’s shoulders and lap. He sets up a small folding table with a glass each of lemonade and water, switches on the fifties-style little television — the image comes through in color and crystal clear resolution — and sets it to an early episode of Sailor Moon, the only show he knows Tommy likes. Then he leaves him be and goes off to putter about in the kitchen with spaghetti and a simple red sauce.

Halfway through eating dinner in front of the television, Tommy sets aside his fork and says hoarsely, “I’ve, um. Already seen this show a, uh, a bunch. Could we watch something else? ...Please.”

“Of course,” the G-Man says, leaping to his feet, and then sitting back down awkwardly to collect his briefcase from the floor beside him. It opens with a click to reveal a TV Guide of All Television Past, Present and Future, which he offers to Tommy.

It’s obviously overwhelming. At least the G-Man catches on quicker this time — he flips to the Children’s Anime section and picks a show that won’t be out for a few more years, just to be sure Tommy hasn’t already seen it.

So  _ Beyblade  _ plays in the background as Tommy recovers and the G-Man frets and attempts to covertly look up what he should do through the Wikipedias in his briefcase. He fails to be subtle, though, and Tommy’s attention is drawn to the powerful item. He watches as the G-Man pulls out far more sheafs of paper than ought to fit inside the bag.

“How, uh. How does your suitcase work?”

“Briefcase,” the G-Man automatically corrects, then hesitates before turning the item towards Tommy. The cyan light of it reflects in the boy’s eyes, briefly illuminating them yel— no, that can’t be right.

The G-Man turns the briefcase towards Tommy and explains: “It is the source of my, hm… abilities, and. Contains. The, sum, total of all — human. Knowledge, past, present… and future.” He pauses, thoughtfully lacing his long fingers together. “Perhaps we, should start with… reading. About. New things, next time, rather. Than. Hopping right into them.”

“Um… yeah, okay.” Cautiously, Tommy offers the G-Man a slight smile. The G-Man’s heart soars; he smiles warmly in return.

It takes time, though perhaps less time than I was expecting. Through shared meals, binged television series, and gradual but freely given access to everything Tommy has questions about, the relationship between the two changes from one based solely on exchange to something warmer and genuinely familial.

The G-Man starts to pick up on Tommy’s quieter cues and is able to address the needs Tommy had spent so long disregarding. He patiently talks Tommy through how to use his briefcase (which, I’d like to once more remind everyone, is an _extreme_ breach of conduct!) and is pleased to share his own experience and knowledge as requested. Occasionally the G-Man is called into work by other narrators, whereupon he misuses his abilities by changing out of his house clothes in a decidedly anime-esque transformation sequence. Though I cannot emphasize enough how very stupid a use of his powers this is, to be fair it does impress and amuse Tommy.

Similarly, Tommy tests the boundaries of the G-Man’s patience. Given that he’s accustomed to adults whose patience is limited, this starts out quite minor: with manageable requests and expressing himself. There seems to be little the G-Man won’t allow, though the man does fret to a degree that baffles Tommy — he’s quite capable of handling sharp knives and equipment himself, thank you. Together they slowly work their way through the biology sections of Wikipedia, occasionally dipping into Secret Wikipedia as well, as Tommy is exposed more and more to the secrets of the G-Man’s profession.

The G-Man’s patience with Tommy’s oddities, his apparent delight at his questions and burgeoning self-confidence, and the ever-present support (particularly of his desire to take apart the G-Man — oh,  _ so  _ sorry, I  _ definitely  _ meant “the G-Man…’s  _ abilities” _ ) are all a little bittersweet to Tommy. He’s reminded of the creature, whom he hasn’t seen since that day at the train station — and certainly not for lack of trying. He regularly takes the train out of the void and into his proper time period for school, where he spends all day craning his neck to look out windows and uses recess to wander further than he’s technically allowed and search for his friend. To his building distress, it is simply nowhere to be found.

A few months in, the G-Man takes an atypically quiet Tommy to pick out new clothes. The boy wanders the aisles, clearly thinking quite hard about something or other, and ultimately brings to the counter not only clothing in bright colors and patterns but also a few basic pieces in wool, clearly modeled after the G-Man’s style. The man gets choked up.

“Thomas,” he says, eyes watering.

“Tommy,” the boy corrects. “I think you should call me Tommy from, uh, from now on. And can — I — I’m going to call you Dad, now, too.”

“O-oh,” the G-Man says, crying freely now. He’s well aware that Tommy doesn’t much like being embraced by people, so instead he places a gentle hand on his son’s shoulder. Tommy graciously allows it.

“Ah, um, also,” Tommy continues after a short period of time that he deems the appropriate length to let his father cry, “I’m not learning enough in school, and the trains could send me anywhere and -when, s-so. So I think I should start going to different schools.  _ And,  _ um, I wanna join the track team.”

That startles G-Man’s tears to a stop. “The track team?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “They have practice til, uh, their practice kinda goes til whenever, so you’ll — you’ll have to pick me up late sometimes.” He stays very still, not emoting at all, watching the G-Man.

The G-Man folds his long fingers together and does a passable job of keeping his own suspicions off his face. “...Well, I. Suppose both of those. Could be, managed.”

Tommy is eight years old at this point. During the following years, Tommy changes schools at least once a semester to many a different place and time. The various track teams have long meets with variable practice hours, which means sometimes he can eke out a little extra time for his extra-extracurricular goals. Mainly he stays within a few years and miles of his original era — ah. Specifically so that he can search for his dangerous creature friend.

It’s not that he’s  _ lied  _ to the G-Man, exactly, about what he wanted, but the fact that he’s keeping the main, actual reason from him — well, Tommy himself knows it isn’t nice. And as time goes on, as he comes to actually kind of love the strange man/entity that swooped in from nowhere to choose Tommy specifically, it feels less “not nice” and more  _ mean. _

But he loves the creature, too, and he hates the idea of it alone and without friends. And while the G-Man said he’d leave it be, over time Tommy’s learned enough about his dad’s job to recognize that there was probably a very good reason he was sent after it in the first place. He’s already made the G-Man compromise his job once — he doesn’t want to make him make that choice again.

Not that it looks like he’ll ever need to, as the creature seems to have vanished completely from the time and space Tommy has access to. With the G-Man picking him up and dropping him off every day, there’s no way for him to increase his range, either, so for a time Tommy despairs that his friend may be lost to him forever.

But the day after Tommy’s bar mitzvah, the G-Man sits Tommy down at the table in the dining room they only eat in for holidays (due to the fanciness and the annoying tendency for drinks to spill upwards) and folds his long fingers together with a proud smile.

“Tommy, you have. Grown well,” the G-Man begins.

“Thanks,” Tommy replies immediately, busy scuffing his feet against the carpet beneath his chair. He’s recently hit a growth spurt that allows him to touch his feet to the ground when he sits in chairs and is still delighted by it.

The G-Man’s smile quirks a little bit, thinking of the small boy he once met who wouldn’t dare fidget in the presence of an adult, who would be watching with wary eyes rather than tracing his fingers along the carved sides of the table before him. He’s really come so far… but the G-Man also hasn’t forgotten the happiness he saw in that small boy when he was with his friend(s). He wants that for Tommy, however Tommy may choose to find it.

“I believe,” the G-Man continues, “that it is time… for you to. Learn. How to operate, the trains… on your own.”

Tommy’s tapping feet and fingers still. His gaze snaps up, yellow eyes wide —

No, that’s — that’s wrong. His eyes are dark brown, I know they’re brown, I can see right now that they’re brown but the G-Man’s brow is creasing too and could it — could it—?

“Really??” Tommy yelps, and doesn’t wait for an answer to throw himself across the table and wrap his lanky arms uncomfortably tight around his father. It’s fast, and awkward in the way a hug between these two could only ever be, but the G-Man will remember this moment for the rest of his life. “You’ll really teach me?  _ Really? _ ” Tommy spins away from the embrace and starts bouncing around the room, hands dancing in excitement. “Oh, I could, I could take myself to and from school, and you wouldn’t have to wait for me to call you when track’s over, and I could — uh, I could, could, go learn about things without having to bother you—”

“Tommy, you. Are  _ never.  _ A bother,” the G-Man says sternly, and Tommy sticks his tongue out at him.

“You know what I was, what I was trying to, what I meant.” But he stops now, anxious fingers flying to the pockets of his trousers where he has sewn in rabbit fur. He turns big, concerned dark eyes on the G-Man. “But won’t that — Are you even, uh, even allowed to—?”

_ No,  _ he is  _ not.  _ The fact that he’s been sharing his powers with Tommy at all is already bad enough, especially since we have no idea what the long-term effects could be! Yeah,  _ technically _ it’s not specifically in his contract, so he’s not doing anything exactly  _ wrong  _ by sharing aspects of life with the family we never expected him to have, but… Look, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the contract or not. I don’t want him to be doing it, especially since he’s ignoring the job I gave him (the job that introduced him to Tommy in the first place, might I add). He should be scared of me. He should  _ respect  _ me, at least.

Anyways, I am a very intimidating figure in his life. And even if he’s technically allowed to share what he wants with Tommy, he’s not smart enough to figure that out on his own.

“There’s nothing. About it, in — my… contract,” the G-Man says, his smile entirely too self-satisfied.

Oh, you smug bastard.

In the handful of years it takes to learn how to use this aspect of the G-Man’s briefcase, Tommy grows. His interest in biology develops, he hits another growth spurt, and he becomes overall a very capable, very confident young man. He still doesn’t much like people and never really bothers to make friends, but he’s content learning and living with his father. When he brings up the fact that he once wanted nothing more than to write a paper exposing the science behind the G-Man’s abilities, it’s with a fondness and irony that barely hides the truth: now, Tommy would never, ever do anything to hurt his father.

And the thing is, he really does believe that he won’t have to.

He’s seventeen years old when he finally finds the creature. The articles of Even Secreter Wikipedia have become more and more legible to him as his skill with the G-Man’s briefcase has grown, and although attempting to comprehend the future gives him terrible headaches, he can access great swathes of human knowledge from the past — including knowledge from his father.

The article isn’t clear on whether or not the G-Man has made the connection between the monstrous creature that broke his time stop and the raccoon-shaped thing that was once Tommy’s only friend. The information is all there, though, and Tommy is brilliant; of course he puts it together. From there it only takes a month or two of time- and location-hopping to home in on the creature that will become Benrey.

You’ve already seen how this reunion looks from the creature’s point of view. It’s nice to know how it happened, isn’t it? It’s even kind of nice that this connection exists despite the fact that reality should get in the way. That these two beings who should never have met care about each other, will search each other out, will just have innocent, goofy fun together in the woods.

But you also know it doesn’t last.

That last day, Tommy skips track practice to call the train early. As always he has the G-Man’s briefcase, lent to him for the school day and tucked carefully away in his overly large embroidered backpack. He ducks behind the school, makes sure he is alone, and reaches a hand inside to borrow the G-Man’s powers and call forth a train —

But today, rather than the typical cyan of the G-Man’s powers, the color called forth is _yellow_ — oh, fuck, actually that’s…

Wait, could I—?

Tommy stills, because suddenly the world he was in has fallen away and left him absolutely nowhere.

The void presses in on all sides. Slowly, Tommy retracts his hand from his bag and looks around, eyes wide. He’s out of practice at hiding his feelings, and right now he finds himself very, very frightened.

“Hello?” he calls into the nothing.

...Tommy? Can you hear me?

He starts. “Uh, y. Yeah?”

Ah.

Well.

Welcome to the company, kid. Think we could get your dad in here to sign some paperwork?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: narrator is unjustly judgmental throughout; child gets overstimulated which adult does not initially recognize; maybe unreality bc our narrator’s inherently Like That but especially here?
> 
> 1\. this chapter was already so long there was no room to actually put the last name discussion lol. anyway it happened pre-adoption while the G-Man and Tommy sat in a Dunkin and tried to fill out school paperwork together. though the G-Man probably doesn’t legally exist, he did have his last name changed on his employers’ contract to match. the narrator never brings it up because they are genuinely SO JEALOUS, WHY’S HE GET A COOL LAST NAME, NO FAIR >:C  
> 2\. originally all i knew about the g-man from actual half life was from the first game, where he was so clearly a plot device that i decided to run w that being basically his actual job hoohoohaha. but it turns out he’s pretty neat, so i’ll probably be folding in bits of canon from the other games as well. [bugs and frankie](https://www.twitch.tv/facefullabugs) talk about him in [a stream or two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jaSWbRMu4Q) if you’re interested :]  
> 3\. aw, i’m so glad people are reading along w this silly lil project of mine ;-; this story was only meant to be a way around writer’s block but it’s become a lot of fun for me. just wanted to say thanks for commenting, thanks for kudosing, thanks for reading!! :’D <3  
> 4\. NEXT TIME: smackdown >:] also if we don’t at LEAST get to sunkist’s intro i s2g i will angrily eat a whole bag of carrots  
> 5\. BONUS: [HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28608507) is a soft frenrey nye kiss plus some goofy science team shenanigans that i wrote :) i just reread it and it made me put my face in my hands and blush several times, so there’s that if u like that kinda thing lol
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: The G-Man adopted Tommy and eventually Tommy adopted him back. Tommy learned how to use the G-Man’s briefcase and accidentally got himself hired into the family business. THIS TIME:  
> “I hate trains!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

Tommy picks things up quick, perhaps especially when he’s scared. It doesn’t take much coaching for him to grasp how to pull people into the void with him.

The expression on the G-Man’s face when he opens the door to the refrigerator in his home and finds not only the void but also his son, pale and yellow-eyed, and the employer he’s been putting off for nearly ten years is — well, it doesn’t make up for any of this mess, but it is just about priceless. He immediately steps through, lifting his slippered feet over the fridge’s edge and pulling his fluffy pastel blue robe tighter against the chill.

“Are you alright?” he asks Tommy, chest tight, as he scrutinizes his son’s glowing eyes.

“Y-yeah,” Tommy says, but he hurries to his father’s side. When the G-Man hesitantly puts a long-fingered hand on his shoulder, Tommy leans into it. The G-Man’s lips thin; with a synthetic  _ shing!  _ the glow of the void goes from warm yellow to ice cold cyan.

“You had  _ no. Right. _ To drag my son into this,” he thunders, voice shaking with fury.

Which is an absolute  _ joke,  _ G-Man, because all  _ I  _ did was dial an extension that should never have existed in the first place. I can’t call on someone who doesn’t work for us, and —

“You —  _ hired  _ him?” the G-Man demands, paling terribly.

No! Come on, I wouldn’t do that to a kid. What I was going to say is that _someone’s_ been exposing him to timestops and Secret Wikipedias, and _someone’s_ been teaching him how to use the plot device in his backpack, and that _someone_ sure set everything up for him to activate his own internship.

You did this to him, G-Man, and you’re just lucky that I’m the employer who noticed first.

Impossibly, he pales further. He raises a hand; immediately his briefcase is pulled through the very molecules of a still and silent Tommy’s backpack. The G-Man opens the plot device with shaking hands and tears out his contract, scanning through it at impressive speed. “No, there’s nothing… It says I could, hh, could — tell my, family. Why, would it say—?”

Because while it would be totally unethical of us to make you keep your job a secret from your family, you were specifically chosen  _ because _ you didn’t have one — and because we never expected you to make one, either. Seriously, this is so far out of the range of behavior we selected you for. Plus, you didn’t stop at just telling Tommy about your job, man, you invited him in! You gave him the knowledge and the access he needed to awaken his own potential as one of our employees. Your choices led us here. You did this to him.

A series of pained expressions flash across the G-Man’s face before he shakes his head sharply and very nearly snarls. (Tommy stares.) “Is. He.  _ Hired.  _ Or isn’t he.”

I mean — okay, the best I can explain it is that right now it’s like he’s an intern. He might not technically be a part of the company but any one of us could call on him if we caught him on duty. You saw his eyes, the yellow —

“How do I. Stop. It.”

You can’t; the most we can do is slow it down. To do that you’d need to stop letting him have access to your plot device (which, again, you really shouldn’t have allowed in the first place) and —

“Wait — wait. You… Just. So. Happened to — notice when he, ah, ‘joined the company,’ did you? Hm? You weren’t…  _ waiting  _ for this?”

...I couldn’t have known this would happen, G-Man.

“But you were watching?” he presses. “I am far from… the only, employee — on duty. If you had, merely _asked_ another, you could have stopped—”

Oh, could I have? Who’s to say they wouldn’t have just dropped the job I gave them too? You left yours, you know. You’ve left me on read for a decade, while that world-ending creature was out there doing who knows what—

“That  _ creature, _ ” the G-Man hisses, “that —  _ one  _ creature, hm? You never told me, that it, was  _ one,  _ and a shapeshifter at that. You — gave me  _ no  _ information, nothing. From which. To work. You expected me—”

You know that it was—? I mean — I mean, you should have figured it out immediately! It, it should have been obvious it was the same thing as the last job I gave you, you should have known, you shouldn’t have been playing at being a father when—

“Sh-shut  _ up! _ ” Tommy cries, voice cracking.

...Tommy?

“Tommy,” the G-Man says, just as stunned.

The young man’s hands are balled into fists, tears fall from his eyes, and his teeth are clenched in fury. It’s a marked difference from the kind of tight, withheld anger that was once all he could express. “W-what, what kind of a narrator are you?” he demands, glaring into the void. “You said you, you’ve been watching but you think he’s — you said he — My dad isn’t  _ playing  _ at being my dad. I, I wouldn’t be half the, the, the man I am toda— right now if I — if he hadn’t found me!”

That’s not — um, alright, maybe I shouldn’t have put it quite —

“And the creature — you mean my, my friend? You were the one that, that hired my dad to, to, to get rid of it?”

Well, yes —

“I read some of my dad’s Even Secreter Wikipedia article,” he says, scrubbing the tears from his face. Beside him, the G-Man’s eyebrows shoot up. “I know what you told him. You didn’t — you waited to call him. I, I found my friend in the exact same place as the original, um, m-monster. And I’ve read about the way dimension-hopping works — the same kind, in the same place, a few years apart? That’s not how things work. My friend split off from that original a-an-anomaly, correct?”

Oh, that’s. That’s very well-reasoned, Tommy, yes —

“So you left it there for several years? Alone? To grow and, and become something?”

Um. Well that’s not exactly, ah,  _ why  _ I left it, and anyways it wasn’t quite alo—

“And,” Tommy continues, even as he trembles with mixed fear and anger, “you’ve been watching me and my dad and my friend? Even when you  _ could  _ have, have called someone else to come help? And you, you called me here as soon as I — as soon as you saw I had, um — as soon as I used my, my  _ own  _ abilities instead of my dad’s?”

Er. When you put it like that —

“I think you, you chose to let my friend grow,” Tommy says, voice hard and dark eyes flashing with sparks of yellow. “I think you chose to let my — let the G-Man adopt me. I think you saw what might happen, with me, and I think you might, uh, might be less — less uninvolved than you pretend you are. I think — I, I think—”

The G-Man holds his breath.

“I think that you’re an unreliable narrator,” Tommy says.

For a long moment, the void is silent except for Tommy’s heavy breaths and the G-Man’s panicked heartbeat.

G-Man.

He very nearly drops his briefcase. “Y-yes?”

You and I need to discuss how we can stop things from spiralling any further out of control. Tommy?

The young man sniffs loudly.

You’re on the payroll now. We’ll try to keep you from being scheduled for anything, but at some point you’ll have no choice. For now, you have to stop using the trains. And you’ve read how timelines work — if you keep seeing your friend like this, if you stop him from meeting you as a child, then you could break the whole dimension.

“F-fine.” New tears fall from Tommy’s eyes, but he sets his jaw as the train arrives. As he boards, he and the G-Man exchange a look, one of —

“A little privacy. Please,” the G-Man says.

Fine.

(I… might need a moment myself, anyways.)

((Hhh. Jeeze.

Okay… okay.))

After the train has left, the G-Man turns, looking even older than his impossibly extended years. “Well? Can you — fire him, or?”

Not without the help of others like me, but I doubt alerting them to his technical availability would go well — they’d just see him as another tool to use. Our best bet is keeping him away from all of this stuff, see if we can’t slow it down.

“Hm… Obviously, the trains, and. The briefcase… Perhaps the house, as well—”

G-Man? I’m sorry, but I do mean keep him away from  _ all  _ of it.

“Ah.” His shoulders slump. “There’s really, nothing else—?”

No.

“But he’s so… young.” He blinks twice, slowly, processing, and his face creases even further in pain. “We’ve had such… little… time. He’s my. Son.”

For what it’s worth, G-Man, I… I really didn’t know that he was being signed on until it was too late. I thought I was seeing things. If I could have stopped it, if I had just caught the foreshadowing —

“It is fine.” The G-Man shakes his head, dismissive and tired. “If this is what it takes… What do you. Think? Naturally, he and I will be. Exchanging. Letters. But perhaps, holidays—?”

Honestly, G-Man, I think seeing each other more than once a year would be stretching it.

He twitches. His fluttering hands reach as though to straighten his tie, but then fall bonelessly at his sides. “Yes, I — yes. Of course.”

I’m sorry.

He shrugs, a tight, jerky motion of his shoulders. He keeps his face turned away.

It takes a few minutes for him to compose himself. “Hm… I did. Have. One last, question…”

Yeah?

“Tommy’s been with me for — nearly a decade, now. In all that time, no other narrator has even. Noticed. Him… So. Why were you. In particular. The first narrator to, realize he’d been—?”

Ah. Well, G-Man, sorry to pile bad news on top of bad news, but… you know you didn’t pick up some random kid off the streets. You picked someone who was already wrapped up in a story.

The man winces. “Is there… anything—?”

No. But I think he’ll be alright — this story’s had its ups and downs, but it doesn’t quite look like a tragedy just yet. And besides, I… your son isn’t wrong, exactly. I’m maybe not as detached from the story as I ought to be.

The G-Man’s expression eases, just a little. “I appreciate… you looking out for him. I just worry, about him, on his own…”

Well, that’s another thing, actually…

***

Back before Tommy learns how to use the trains, before he gets used to living in a non-coterminous house in the void, before he accepts the G-Man as his family, a particularly large, fat raccoon-shaped creature watches its best friend take a train away to a life it hopes will be happier.

The train vanishes into the distance, but the cyan time stop remains. The creature twitches its ears, watching, as from down the tracks another train appears. The train chugs along until coming to a stop before the creature perched upon a bench, which waits in wary curiosity.

The train doors rattle open and from within steps out a tall, lanky figure. A seventeen-year-old Tommy scans the scene til his eyes fall on the creature, whereupon he smiles. He looks tired, his face scrubbed raw after his goodbyes with his father, but he’s genuinely glad to see his friend again. With it, the future doesn’t seem so daunting.

The creature examines the young man who approaches, comparing him against its recent memories of a young Tommy and its older memories of a teen Tommy who cried when he said goodbye so many months ago. It waits.

Tommy stops before it. He cracks a weak smile. “Hi. So uh, what — what do you think about the name Coolatta?”

“BBBBB!” the creature says, spilling out sweet voice in delighted greens and pinks and turquoise, as it leaps into Tommy’s arms. It peppers his cheeks with kisses as Tommy bursts into laughter… and it keeps it up, softer and more worriedly, when that laughter starts to sound more like sobs.

Tommy will make the best out of what he has, and what he has is an acceptance letter to a prestigious STEM school, the key to a mildly magical P.O. Box that will allow him and his father to write to one another, several bags packed with all of his worldly possessions, and a well of determination. Plus, of course, the creature, who is once again the only family Tommy will see with any regularity.

Yes, the creature is still wanted under G-Man’s contract, and yes, of course it could still consume this dimension if it ever wanted to. But… well, you’ve read along with me, haven’t you? You’ve watched it grow and become something, as Tommy put it, and I’m… well, honestly, maybe my own fondness for what that something is  _ has _ made me a little bit “unreliable.” So what if I want it to let it continue existing?

Besides, no other narrator has even noticed it yet. As long as it doesn’t evolve much more sapience, as long as Tommy keeps an eye on it, as long as it doesn’t do anything too big or — god forbid — dimension-breaking, then all of us can keep getting away with this.

Yes. With me, the G-Man, and Tommy all on the job, I think this whole thing will turn out just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: characters interact w narrator; tense negotiations; discovering that you’ve been lied to/mislead; learning belatedly that you have put ur family in harm’s way; teen in somewhat existential danger?; family being separated from one another.
> 
> 1\. Narrator like “i will try to do a better job of picking up on foreshadowing as it relates to the safety of tommy and his family” and then ends the chapter like THAT. honey.  
> 2\. me: ugh i wish i had a better name for the power item-briefcase-etc-things // my brain, apathetic, not even paying attention: oh, you mean the Plot Devices? // me: ...BROOO  
> 3\. have decided that while the Narrator has no physical form, it/they/she could be represented as any non-moving interactable asset from well-known video game Half Life (radios, cacti, guns, soda cans, etc)! aka A Special Tool That Will Help Us Later — emphasis on the TOOL, haha gottemmm  
> 4\. found myself sitting at my desk, face in my hands, distressed about Tommy calling the Narrator “unreliable,” and promptly burst out laughing at the absurdity. this is such a goofy story and i’m SO pleased that it can make me have emotions, too :D  
> 5\. we did not make it to sunkist >:l we could have, but i think the structure is cleaner if we wait til a new chapter to introduce her. i will now poutily eat an entire bag of carrots.  
> 6\. NEXT TIME: doctorates, blackmail, the US government, and (at last!!) The Perfect Dog.
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: the G-Man and Tommy were forced to separate in an effort to prevent Tommy being properly hired by the Narrator’s coworkers. At least the Narrator’s promised to look out for him — and of course he’s got the creature, too. THIS TIME:  
> *bitcrushed barking that is somehow also absolutely perfect*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a bridge chapter between this story’s Act One and Act Two! We’re gonna be doing Some Stuff here soon so hopefully I've earned your trust as a writer (and more hopefully i’ll deserve it skgjskfk). Thanks for coming along on the ride thus far :]  
> Also, new tags! WRT the new Benrey/Gordon tag: I figured it deserves a tag since it’s, like, a MAJOR factor in Benrey’s behavior moving forward. I’m pretty sure this story isn’t going to end with them getting together but there’s def gonna be mutual attraction, mutual idiocy, Benrey pining, and an ending with a hopeful note for their future together. ALSO, “No Archive Warnings Apply” will be true forever, but there is death in HLVRAI so we’ll have to deal with that. Good thing this is a video game — wait, sorry, this is a “Not (Quite) A Game AU”? …eh, it’ll probably be fine.
> 
> See end notes for content warnings.

So Tommy finishes growing up without his father. They exchange letters, of course, and once a year they risk the minor exposure to plot devices in order to see each other again, if only for one short day. Naturally, the G-Man picks his son’s birthday.

“Please come,” Tommy pleads, that first year. He kneels before his closet, where the creature has turned all black and is “hiding” while it blows out motes of yellow sweet voice. Maybe if he uses a funny enough name? “Please, um… oh! Please, Coward?”

“Fuck you bro, ‘m no Coward,” we might imagine the creature saying as its huge claws scrape at the wooden floor, eyes wide with fear. “But also no thank you? Do not worry about me bro I am SO good in here. Have fun please goodbye? Mwah.”

Tommy winces, both at the damage to his dorm room floor and the translation he mutters under his breath: “Yellow like hay means _nuh-uh, no way…_ Oh, come on, please? You don’t have to, to talk to him or anything, I just—” Tommy sighs, sitting heavily on his feet. “I. I just want you there, with me. You’re my family too.”

“... _ugh_ ,” the creature might say, and it grumpily exits the closet to follow Tommy to the small theme park the G-Man has rented out for them to try for the day.

I’ll leave them their privacy for those days, but I will say that the creature always keeps its distance from the G-Man. It hides in the rafters and on high shelves, watching the G-Man as warily as the G-Man watches it. They’ll probably never be comfortable with one another but they’re both capable of putting their mutual distrust aside for one day a year for Tommy’s happiness.

The creature is always doing that. Not just sacrificing for Tommy, but also following him around; it knows what it’s like to lose him and it’d rather avoid experiencing that again, thanks. Tommy’s university becomes accustomed to the sight of them together: the tall, fashionable, brilliant and very mysterious student and the strange-looking dog that’s always trotting after him.

Tommy keeps his distance and doesn’t really make friends, though every so often he’ll bring someone home for the night. Their reports vary widely: some even claim that the dog doesn’t even live with Tommy — instead they say he has the fattest raccoon they’ve ever seen, or an enormous snake (the animal, not the euphemism), or that they swear there was an ostrich napping in the corner. In any case, Tommy never lets anyone stay a second night.

For all the creature’s shape changes, its personality stays much the same. It is curious, protective, somewhere between bird-intelligent and chimp-dumb, and altogether pretty goofy. It does as Tommy asks because it knows Tommy cares about it and because it is a nice, polite little fellow. It likes to shapeshift and play games and pranks and things like that, though it’s picky about who it allows close to it. Mostly, it’s just Tommy — and as Tommy gets busier with class work, this situation becomes more difficult for both of them.

Tommy has grown into patience and he loves the creature, of course, but there’s just not enough time in the day to work on his undergrad, complete his fraternity duties, apply to doctorate programs, entertain the creature, and also take care of himself. Sometimes, when it’s nearing midnight and he’s looking down the barrel of another all-nighter, he just wishes he had a little more _time—_

Tommy.

Tommy startles to find himself in the void rather than the messy dorm he’d just been in. “Aw, shit,” Tommy says. “I did it again?”

Yeah. That’s the third time this semester, kid. Do you think maybe—?

“I _knowww,_ ” Tommy moans, “I should take less, less, uh — take fewer classes. Dad says the same thing. But, but, but there’s so much to learn, and it’s not like I can just use Dad’s plot device anymore—”

For good reason! We’re trying to keep you from activating your powers — like you keep doing, by the way. You’re lucky I keep catching you before any other narrator can.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “I, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—”

I know you don’t, kid, it’s alright. And, well, I do keep catching you, don’t I? Every time?

“Uh. Yeah?”

You might, well. I’m just saying — one might even call me _reliable,_ eh? A reliable narrator?

Tommy blinks twice.

“Okay, I’m gonna go now,” he says, and cuts off his powers with a _shing_ that returns him to his dorm room. The creature, still unaccustomed to the yellow time-stops that mean its friend disappears, immediately climbs all fifty pounds of itself into Tommy’s lap to worriedly poke at his cheek.

“Sorry, Mini,” he says. The creature snorts at the name and pokes a wet nose into Tommy’s ear, making him squawk and shove the creature to the floor. “Oh come on, that one’s kinda, kinda cute! Your full name could be, uh, Mini Coolata! Don’t you like it?”

It pulls itself onto the back of Tommy’s chair with the body of an enormous grey snake, looking both unimpressed and concerned as small bubbles of light trail from its mouth.

“Clementine to dark blue with grey specks means… Okay maybe, maybe I am trying to change the subject,” Tommy agrees, sighing. He lifts a hand and the creature automatically puts its head under it, giving itself soft fur where Tommy touches. “It’s just… there’s so much to, to do, and learn! And there’s no time. And I want you to be happy, and have fun, but I have to do my work, too! I — aughhhh.” The creature slips a fat raccoon paw between the desk and Tommy’s head before he can bang his skull against it too hard. “I’m sorry, I know you want to hang out more, I just… it’s hard, when. When it’s just us.”

Tommy takes a moment, facedown there on the desk, to miss his father fiercely. Even a few years into their forced separation, even with the creature at his side, sometimes loneliness hits like a wave and pulls Tommy under.

The creature puts another paw on its friend’s face. When he doesn’t respond, it puts another one. Then another. The next one is slimy and definitely more tentacle-like than paw-like and at last Tommy sighs and sits up.

“Okay. Okay,” he says, determined, and places a kiss on the creature’s head. “I need to, to. I’m going to the library. I will see you…” His shoulders sink a little and he groans. “Tomorrow. I, uh, I hope.”

The creature slithers out of its friend’s lap and climbs up to the highest shelf to watch Tommy collect his things and close the door behind him. It curls itself up and thinks about Tommy’s sadness when he had said “just us.”

It has an idea.

Meanwhile, Tommy drinks quite a lot of highly caffeinated soda and stays up all night completing lab reports, reading articles, and studying his notes. The next morning he dashes to his first lab of the day and blearily notes that the creature hasn’t come to meet him — maybe it’s sleeping in? But he has tests and things to dissect so he doesn’t worry about it too much.

But the creature doesn’t appear at all that day, not between classes, at meals, or at any of the extracurriculars Tommy’s involved in. It’s not like it doesn’t know how to unlock the doors and windows to their dorm — it figured that out very quickly and seems to take some delight in relocking them as well, particularly when Tommy has forgotten his keys — but maybe it’s off romping in the nearby woods today? Tommy tries not to worry, but by that evening he’s convinced himself the creature was hurt by what he said last night. When he’s finally turning the doorknob to his dorm he has an apology on his tongue, all ready to go —

He blinks twice rapidly. His room is a _mess,_ and there’s sweet voice hanging in the air all over the place.

“Uh,” Tommy says, and the creature darts out from under the bed in a streak of color-changing fur. It regularly shapeshifts freely and it likes to play with its form but Tommy’s never seen it so unstable before — then it wraps some kind of limb around his forearm and drags him in, slamming and locking the door behind them.

It lets loose a veritable bouquet of sweet voice directly in Tommy’s face — he tastes excitement and fear and a little regret and hope and ever-present love and quite a lot of stress under all the sweeter flavors. Tommy has no time for a rhyme, though we might translate the creature's spiel as “BRO I had idea and. Bad? Good? ‘Just us’ bad, so more good? Help please thank you??”

Uh. What?

“Uh, what—?” Tommy says, and the creature tugs him to the ground and partway under the bed where it has collected every soft item Tommy owns (of which there are a lot) and fashioned a sort of nest, wrapped around a bemused Tommy’s favorite microscope. It prods him into looking through the device at the petri dish it has placed with utmost care on the microscope’s stage.

“It’s… slime mold?” Tommy says. “No, uh, wait, it’s some sort of algae — no, that part right there just changed, now it’s a, uh, a, a… uh. It.” He blinks twice, breaks out in a cold sweat, and refocuses the microscope. “It. It changed.”

He looks at the creature. The creature looks back with a dozen eyes, holding an unnecessary breath while it waits for Tommy’s conclusion and judgment.

“You,” Tommy says. “You. Made another? You, you split off — you cloned — you.” Hang on, is he saying—?

Oh.

OH.

“You asexually reproduced. You literally made yourself a new friend,” Tommy says with no small wonder and HOLY SHIT. BAD??

OKAY, okay, this… Yeah, this is bad. It made _another_ of itself — like, another could-destroy-the-dimension monster, but this one’s a baby all over again. What if this one doesn’t grow up as nice? What if this one gets so big other narrators notice it? What if they all decide that this is my fault and then _I_ get fired?

Okay, Tommy just needs to activate his powers real quick so I can pull him into the void and we can talk and figure out a plan, because I am _not_ going back to job hunting after this, no _way._ So he just needs to activate his powers. Come on, just a little flash of yellow in the eyes, and we’ll come up with a plan and maybe kill the thing before it becomes a problem and then we can all keep getting away with this. Come on.

Any second now.

...Tommy?

But he’s not doing it. His eyes stay as brown as any human’s, leaving him in the normal timestream and out of my reach. In fact, right now they’re watering — well _yeah,_ I’d be crying too, this is awful —

Tommy reaches out his long arms and wraps the creature up as much as he can, squeezing tight and burying his face in its fur. “You are so, so thoughtful, and I understand why you, uh, why you did this,” he says, muffled against the creature’s skin. The creature embraces him back, its own worry shrinking at Tommy’s quiet, wry laughter. “But, but… yeah, you’ve kinda fucked us both over.”

Not just “both” of you, but me too, kid! So just activate your powers for a second so you and I can actually _talk,_ please?

But he doesn’t. He tugs the creature under his arm and hums thoughtfully, running a hand through its fur. “I, uh, I don’t think we can let this one just be itself,” he says apologetically. “That could be bad for… um, well, everything. You especially. So…”

They’ve spent many years learning how to communicate with each other. Even if the creature needs a little more explanation to understand some of the concepts, it and Tommy come to some conclusions together: Neither want to destroy this newest monstrosity, but they also can’t just leave it as it is. To keep it around, they’d need to find a way to lessen its ability to consume everything and ideally teach it the same morals as Tommy once taught Benrey. It also can’t get too smart, just in case it starts doing things my co-workers might notice, and if they could find a way to isolate its minor dimension-breaking powers that would be good, too.

And instead of contacting me, they just… get to work. Tommy’s a brilliant biologist who grew up around nebulous space/time dimensions anyways, and the creature is determined to be nice to both Tommy and the little version of itself it created on a whim, so with their abilities combined — you know, like, the “power of friendship” (and a lot of caffeine and science and patience and experimentation) — they just. Do it.

Alright, I’m simplifying a lot of things. It takes several years of keeping the newest anomaly in an air-tight petri dish, poking at it on a molecular level in the university’s labs and occasionally feeding it tiny pieces of the creature’s cache of DNA and multi-dimensional memories, but gradually Tommy and his creature put physical and metaphysical limits on the tiny being: it can only draw from the DNA of canines, it’s primarily tied to this one particular dimension, it can get pretty big but not big enough to cause catastrophic damage to any one planet. Plus the process is engaging for both of them and close enough to science to solve two problems: it keeps the creature’s attention and, with a little tweaking of the data, serves as Tommy’s doctorate project in biology. He claims he’s making “the perfect dog.”

It’s shortly before they’ll be releasing the little thing from its petri dish prison that Tommy is tapping a gentle finger on its plastic casing while his creature snoozes on a high shelf. It’s late at night and Tommy’s whispering to the newer creature, trying to stay quiet enough he doesn’t wake his friend.

“I’m sorry this has taken us so long,” he says. The small creature within the petri dish presses a vaguely furry pseudopod to its case; a smile tugs on Tommy’s lips. “We just wanted to make sure it was, uh, safe for everyone. And it, it took a while to get the, uh, the IRB approval, and I… I’m sorry to take away most of your, uh, shapeshifting, but I think — I hope you’ll enjoy being a dog? And if we could have done it faster, we, we _definitely_ would have. There just wasn’t time—”

_There!!_

Tommy?

“Oh,” Tommy says, taken aback as he glances around the void. “I didn’t — uh, hi, Mx. The Narrator.”

Hi! Yeah, hey! So it’s been a while; I’ve been trying to get in contact with you regarding your new anomalous dimension-destroyer —

“Oh, we — we’ve already got it covered,” Tommy says, loud and firm, as he puts his tense fists in the pockets of his polka-dotted pajama pants. “It doesn’t, uh, you don’t need to — destroy it, or anything.”

No, I know, I just — uh, well, I wanted to offer my help, I guess.

Tommy’s eyebrows raise. “...uh, we. We kinda already — I mean, it can’t really do any of the, uh, bad stuff that we were worried about.” He frowns. “Right? Can you check?”

There hasn’t really been any foreshadowing about it yet. But, well, you did — you already, um. Well. Huh.

You’ve done a really solid job, actually. I don’t… I don’t think I have anything to add.

“Yeah?” Tommy blinks twice, and his eyes scrunch with a small smile. “Oh, well, that is a relief, Mx. The Narrator! Thanks for, uh, for letting me know. I’ll let you get back to, to, to your work, then?”

Yeah… yeah. Bye, kid.

Tommy leaves the void, returning to his apartment and his old friend and the petri dish of the newest creature, and I’m left alone.

This is good, though! Yeah. Tommy’s incredibly capable, and so brilliant, and the creature’s kind and well-meaning and they both love the new little thing and each other. They’re all together, and that’s good! That’s really great. Yeah, I’m — I’m happy for them.

And the opening of the petri dish, the welcoming of the newest creature, that goes well, too; Tommy and the creature wait with bated breath as they unscrew the little thing’s prison and deposit what looks like a golden-brown slime mold in a pile of organic material (cooked kosher hot dogs, for the record — the creature tried to tell Tommy it’d be fine if they were raw, but Tommy had insisted). It takes a few minutes to consume the hot dogs and reach enough mass to take the shape of…

A tiny golden retriever puppy.

“Uh, hi,” Tommy says, kneeling down to its level and extending a trusting hand for the dog-shaped thing to sniff. “I’m Tommy. This is, uh, my friend — its name is Fanta for today because that’s my favorite, um, my favorite soda.”

The creature is _definitely_ not a Fanta, and it would communicate that if it wasn’t suddenly feeling terribly, terribly shy. It hides all of itself behind Tommy, peeking out with too many eyes on snail-like stalks. The result looks decidedly monstrous, but really it’s just uncertain about the creature that came from itself, that it’s been helping Tommy with for so many years now.

But the puppy-thing barks, high-pitched and cheerful, and releases a teeny mote of friendly green sweet voice. When our original creature extends a heavily clawed hand to it, the puppy licks its fingers and wags its own tail. At last, slowly but with growing interest, our creature relaxes and comes forward.

Tommy grins, relaxing as well. “So you’ll, you’ll need a name, too,” he tells the little dog-shaped thing as his friend curls around it, poking and patting and scritching it with several raccoon paws. The puppy-creature butts its head against Tommy’s hand and he scratches behind its ears, thinking. “Oh! Uh, my second-favorite soda is Sunkist — not that, uh, not that _you’re_ my second-favorite, but you are the second one of your species! Uh, I mean, the third actually, because my dad killed the first one…” Tommy briefly looks a little overwhelmed, recalling the absurd path he and the creature have taken to get here today, but he shakes it off to smile down at his newest friend. “How about it? We could try, try Sunkist for today?”

The puppy-shaped creature throws its little head back and howls, tiny and ululating, while green and pink and blue sweet voice bubbles out of its mouth and fills the room, filling its occupants with the empathic understanding of its thoughts: _Yes! Sunkist! I am Sunkist! I love you and we are friends-family-kin and I am happy to be Sunkist and be with you! Thank you for helping me be! Thank you for making me Sunkist! :)_

“O-oh,” Tommy says, blinking eyes that are suddenly wet. The elder creature curls up more tightly around the newly-christened Sunkist, purring loudly and nuzzling its — rather, her? soft furry cheek. He and it exchange looks over the head of the tiny dog. “Uh. No problem.” Then his smile turns a little teasing. “Wow, you actually liked a name I picked for you, huh? Guess you, you really _are_ perfect.”

The older, still-unnamed creature laughs up some green sweet voice and shoves at its friend; Tommy laughs in return, Sunkist wags her tail, and together things are happy, for a time.

Hang on — “for a time?” That’s foreshadowing! Okay so — scanning forward a bit, Tommy continues not activating his powers. That’s a good thing, mostly, because we don’t want any other narrators to notice he’s got them and then call on him, but it is a problem in that I can’t warn him about the foreshadowing. Crap. Okay, what about…?

G-Man?

The G-Man raises his eyebrows at the void. He straightens his tie. It’s got a pattern like the carpet in a bowling alley and looks really good, actually.

“You think so?” the G-Man says, smiling a little and smoothing down his tie again. “Tommy — got it… for me, at his last. Birth. Day. Par. Tee.”

Figures! That kid’s got a great sense of style. But listen, I called you in because I just got some foreshadowing about tough times coming for Tommy and his friends, and I haven’t been able to get in contact with him so I figured you could pass the message along.

“Of course,” the G-Man says, his brow creasing with worry. “What information do… you. Have?”

Uh. Well, that he’s happy now, but… he won’t always be?

The G-Man nods.

At the continuing silence, though, the G-Man’s worry melts into confusion. “That’s… it? You don’t have any more, hm. Intel?”

Ah, I — um. I guess I don’t.

...Sorry…

The G-Man waves a hand, consciously clearing the judgment from his face with a kindness I’m not sure I deserve. “It is. Fine. I will pass along… the message.”

And with that, he’s gone. Hopefully my information is at least a little bit useful. Kinda wish I had more to offer them…

Especially because that foreshadowing was so vague that it turns out it _doesn’t even help._

It’s when Tommy presents his final doctorate project. He’s been so focused on keeping a close eye on Sunkist and on the creature, too, that naturally it doesn’t occur to him that the danger could come from somewhere normal. He thinks nothing of the extra handful of people in pressed suits at his presentation — nothing, that is, til they seize all of his notes, his work, his frozen discarded materials from working on Sunkist, and Sunkist herself.

For a day and a half, things are a total disaster. Tommy compresses all of his panic and despair and anger into the kind of harsh stone that he used to have to carry around all the time as a child and lawyers up, demanding his work be returned to him. He forbids the creature from going out searching for Sunkist in case it gets taken, too, meaning that the creature spends all those tense hours alone in the tiny apartment Tommy owns, pacing around and going stir-crazy with worry. I contact the G-Man, who pens a hastily-written note to Tommy promising to level whatever organization messed with his son, but Tommy writes back promptly to assure him that that won’t be necessary.

And indeed, it isn’t. Tommy’s lawyers are eventually contacted by a representative of the United States Government. The man brings Sunkist along to the meeting, unrestrained; she leaps into Tommy’s arms, apparently unharmed and just happy to see him. Tommy pulls her close, glaring at the representative.

The man is also accompanied by a turtleneck-wearing old professor-type who keeps his arms clasped behind his back and silently looks down at everyone as the representative explains that while Tommy can have Sunkist back, they will be keeping his notes and any discarded materials from his work and there’s nothing he can do about it. Unless…

“Dr. Coolatta,” the older man says at last, stepping forward with a slimy smile. Tommy’s struck with the realization that this is the first time anyone’s called him that out loud. “I’d love to see you continue your work in a safe place. I’ve brokered an agreement with our government for now that would allow you to continue your research in peace, with us. We’re the home of cutting edge research, after all, and we think you’d fit right in with us at Black Mesa…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: reference to character’s sex life; some unhealthy college habits, particularly about sleep; creating new life on a whim and some subsequent fallout; feeling/being kind of useless; having years worth of work confiscated; blackmail.
> 
> ART: [Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat/pseuds/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat) wrote [a piece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544591) inspired by last chapter’s goodbye between Tommy and G-Man and ;-;!!!
> 
> 1\. there’s way too many he/hims in this series; why shouldn’t sunkist be she/her? also i’m laughin about her gettin billing in the tags above bubby n coomer, but she does show up first. also also, hopefully darnold will get his own tag in this story’s Act Three but he’s already so perfect in canon that i have nothing to add <3  
> 2\. the way i’ve been thinking about Sunkist & Benrey’s relationship is that she’s his little sister who thinks she’s his big sister. he walks out of the house with unbrushed hair and sweatpants and she pulls him aside to try to groom him into being presentable, scolding him all the while :3  
> 3\. we don’t have the time, nor is the timeline quite right, but i keep imagining Mysterious Tall Brilliant Tommy TA’ing an undergrad course taken by Local Conspiracy Theorist Barney Calhoun who becomes obsessed with Benrey The Illegal “Dog” That Is Definitely Not a Dog Because Listen Maybe It’s an Alien… augh, the shenanigans we could have…!  
> 4\. NEXT TIME: i’ve been saying in this fic that benrey becomes human “gradually,” which is defined as “slowly, in steps or amounts.” this next step just happens to be a particularly big one.
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: Black Mesa and the United States Government teamed up to blackmail Tommy into joining Black Mesa’s biology department, continuing his work related to Sunkist (whom he claims to be a totally normal, if perfect, dog). THIS TIME:   
> “He’s encasing him in a cocoon!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little nervous about this one lskjsafdjl. Hope you enjoy!  
> See end notes for content warnings.

So… I peeked ahead.

Don’t judge me, okay? A decade is a long time for there to be no real plot, and characters being content is all well and good but it can get kind of boring. I got curious, skipped a few pages, saw what happened, and thus locked this disaster into the story.

I’m really,  _ really  _ not happy. But let’s catch up, shall we?

***

It’s not that the creature never thinks of Gordon. He was its first friend, after all, as well as its first taste of humanity, through the stolen memories of his kindness towards its earliest prey and in the minuscule amount of blood it once consumed from his bitten hand. After him came Tommy, followed by a long dry period because who else could compare?

But in the years since moving to Nowhere, New Mexico, the creature has had, ah, plenty of “tastes” of humanity.

It patrols the one-story house and its fenced-in desert yard, guarding its occupants from the occasional mysterious operative that means to capture or harm them. Tommy explained to the creature that it was never to absorb the DNA of other humans without consulting him first, so when the creature tears apart the intruders it keeps its throat closed and its old instincts to consume in check. The remains of those humans are instead buried deep in the yard, far deeper down than anyone would ever think to look.

For the most part, though, life is pretty decent. The creature and Sunkist get to romp and play all day, and when Tommy gets home they’re both dedicated to cheering him up (and often they succeed). It’s only the occasional late night or when Tommy takes Sunkist to work that the creature is left alone and its thoughts inevitably trail back to Gordon.

It knows, approximately, which direction it would need to go and for how long to reach him. It wonders how things might have changed for him, whether he would even recognize his old friend with how much it’s changed itself over the years. Mostly, it doesn’t really expect they will ever meet again. Sure, it  _ dreams  _ about that sometimes, of following its psychic connection to Gordon and curling around him in an embrace and getting to listen to its first friend talk and laugh again, of how kind Gordon was and would be, of how much fun and joy they could have together again.

But who doesn’t have thoughts like that, right? So what if the creature’s half in love with a memory or a dream and is reminded of it through the meta-tangible psychic knowledge it has of Gordon’s blood. So what if it always wears a raccoon’s mask, no matter its form, on a barely formed hope that Gordon might recognize it if they ever met again. The child it remembers is far away in space and time, and the creature loves and is devoted to the protection of Tommy and Sunkist. It has accepted that Gordon will just have to remain a part of its past.

Until, that is, Tommy takes Sunkist into work for the first time in a few months and the creature grows bored of its puzzle toys and idly wonders if its old friend is up to anything new — only to sit straight up in shock upon realizing that not only has Gordon gotten much closer since the last check, but he’s practically right next to Tommy and Sunkist themselves. The creature paces and nearly tears the house apart in its impatience for its family to get home, whereupon it pounces on the both of them and holds them down til it can get a good sniff and determine that neither has been in direct contact with its old friend.

“Your first friend?!” Tommy demands gleefully, once the creature has allowed him up off the ground and abashedly tried to explain. “The, the, the — the little girl from, from the woods? She works at Black Mesa, too?? That, that’s…” His expression twists into something a little rueful. “That sucks for her, but how cool that she’s so, uh, so close! Do you wanna try and see her again?”

_ Yellow like hay means “nuh-uh, no way,”  _ is what the creature means to express, but what comes out instead is a complex rainbow of interconnected sweet voice that has Tommy double-blinking in shock and Sunkist  _ immediately  _ laughing in green and pink. Frazzled and embarrassed, the creature leaps at Sunkist and attempts to wrestle all two hundred pounds of her Great Dane shape to the ground using its measly fifty pounds or so; she laughs again and draws it outside, where the two creatures tear around the fenced-in yard, changing shapes as it pleases them, until they have both quite forgotten what started the ruckus in the first place.

Tommy, meanwhile, stays inside and translates the sweet voice more slowly, care in every rhyme. At last he concludes that his oldest friend wants to see  _ its _ oldest friend again with a sweet sort of desperation bordering on painful — but it’s also extremely shy and anxious about how it has changed, as well as aware of the fact that anyone working at Black Mesa could be a threat to it. What if this person would now capture it, would experiment on it against its will? It loved that person so much, and it’s such a sensitive little thing — something like that would break its heart.

So Tommy respects his friend’s choice not to remeet its old friend just yet… but he also quietly sets about finding out which of Black Mesa’s employees this mystery person could be, hoping very much that they might be trustworthy after all.

It takes a while to narrow it down (Tommy just about kicks himself when he realizes that “wore dresses as a child” does not mean “is now a female adult” and has to start over from scratch). In the meantime the creature pretends its newfound interest in inspecting Tommy when he comes home has  _ nothing to do  _ with its long-lost best friend, Sunkist teases her sibling mercilessly, and Tommy finds himself once again low on time. But his control over his abilities has greatly improved in the nearly two decades since I first called him into the void; he doesn’t visit me, accidentally or otherwise, to ask if what he’s doing is a good idea or not.

Typical, but too bad for all of us.

Eventually Tommy’s got it down to a dozen or so possible matches and needs to call in a second opinion. He pulls Sunkist aside and explains to her what he’s trying to do, and would she be willing to surreptitiously meet and vet these people during one of her days at Black Mesa?

Sunkist agrees, waits til Tommy is asleep that night, and then immediately spills the beans to her sibling.

I’ll take this moment to remind you that despite the cutesy rhymes, despite the translations to human speech I’ve offered, these are alien creatures. They’re smarter than any others of their kind, yes, but at the end of the day they’re still beasts, communicating and making choices based on their own esoteric impulses. We can talk about love and trust and apply human motivations to them all we like but we shouldn’t forget that their first, primary instincts are to survive, to prioritize the self, and to consume.

That said, the creature’s reaction to finding out that Tommy has been trying to find its friend for it is very similar to the fluttery panic of a teenager who has just found out that their friend is trying to set them up with their crush.

It alternately panics and preens for the rest of the night, flattered and worried and excited and uncertain, while Sunkist patiently, soothingly grooms it and rolls her eyes where it can’t see. When at last the morning comes, the creature kisses Tommy’s cheek goodbye, gives Sunkist one last nuzzle, and watches them load up the car for a day at work while it anxiously gnaws on a set of puzzle sticks.

And then, at the very last moment, without thinking it through at all, it drops its toy and slithers into the car through a cracked window, startling Sunkist but not alerting Tommy. It quickly camouflages itself against its sister’s fur.

_ WHAT ARE YOU DOING,  _ we might imagine Sunkist saying, if she could speak.

Extremely quietly, in all lowercase, the creature replies, “ _ bbbbbb, _ ” which could be translated as  _ I DON’T KNOW BUT PLAY ALONG PLEASE? _

She’s a good sister and, as smart as she is, her DNA is mostly dog. She sits and stays, panting but trying to play it cool for the thirty-minute drive to Black Mesa. When Tommy opens the door for her she hops out carefully so as not to dislodge the creature that has spread itself thin and clutches to her underside, hiding itself in fur that matches hers. Her mind is a whirlwind as they pass through the first few doors into the facility.

Then, just as they’re passing what to her appears to be yet another everyday scientist in the hallways, the creature clinging to her tenses — and lets go.

She barks in alarm. “Wh-what is it, Sunkist?” Tommy asks, incidentally covering up the quick hiss the creature gives her. She catches sight of a raccoon hand waving her on —  _ go, I’ve got this, it’s fiiine don’t worry about it  _ — before the creature uses its cache of octopus DNA to blend in with the floor. It’s hardly visible at all as it slithers after the scientist and disappears around a corner; Sunkist barely responds to Tommy’s questioning tone, watching the creature go with anxious horror.

Meanwhile, Gordon Freeman is having a goddamn day of his life.

It had taken so long to convince Joshua to put clothes on that morning that Gordon himself had barely had time to change into his work clothes. His new packer had settled weirdly but there hadn’t been time to fix it before they had to run out the door to catch the (late) tram to the Black Mesa Daycare, where all the other parents kept giving him such obviously weird looks that he couldn’t even pretend not to notice them. But they’d all already made it pretty clear earlier in the year that they think he’s some piece of shit dad so he’d ignored them and put on as natural a smile as he could manage to wish Josh a good day.

“Bye-bye, fuckhead!” Joshie had shouted cheerfully in the midst of all the other five-and-unders and Gordon had  _ barely  _ withheld his own mortified laughter before fleeing the scene — no fucking wonder the other parents treat him like shit, jeeze. On top of that he’d gotten on the tram to work and realized he forgot to both eat breakfast and bring lunch, which meant he had to hunt through his pockets to scrounge up enough change to buy something at the vending machines. Which, naturally, were out of cashews so he’d been stuck buying two tiny bags of pretzels and one overly-sweet off-brand snack cake. And then — because  _ of course _ — the coffee in the breakroom was fucking burned.

So Gordon’s had a long day and it’s not even nine o’clock yet. He’s juggling shitty junk food, bad coffee, his briefcase, and his phone because Black Mesa emailed him about some apparently “extremely important new security protocol” taking effect soon which is  _ just _ what he needs when he hasn’t even gotten used to the  _ current  _ stupid protocols —

“Excuse me, sir.”

“What?” Gordon says, barely looking up from his phone, but the guard steps out in front of the card reader and he’s forced to stop and actually look the guy in the eye. “Huh? Hey. Sorry, what—?”

“Y — uh,” the guard says. “Uh, hey, you — uh.”

“Wh— yeah?” Gordon says, brows raising.

“...uh,” the guard says, and Gordon notes with mild alarm that under the rim of his helmet the guy’s face is distinctly red. Maybe he’s having, like, an episode or something? Gordon hesitates, then sticks his phone in his pocket (how important could this stupid email be, anyway) and, with only a minimal amount of awkwardness, places his free hand on the guard’s shoulder.

“Uh, hey, man; are you alright?” he asks.

“...wuh?” the guy squeaks. If anything, his face is getting redder. “Uh! Y-yeah, I’m, uh. ‘M good.”

“Good! That’s great.” Gordon gently pushes him out of the way, swiping his card through the machine. The door starts to crank open. “But go, uh, go get some water or something, man, you look like you need it.” He absentmindedly pats the dude’s shoulder as he steps around him and continues down the hallway. “Okay. See ya.”

_ Kind of a weirdo,  _ he thinks as the metal door seals shut behind him, and then he just about never thinks of that particular guard again. Later, when Gordon realizes that his fly has been down all day, he’s pissed and assumes that no one even tried to tell him. He completely forgets about this little encounter.

Henry, though — Henry will think about this encounter for the rest of his natural life, and then some.

That’s our guard, by the way — Henry. Twenty-five years old, nearly five foot six, stormy grey eyes with long dark lashes. Until about sixty seconds ago he was having an exceedingly normal day: woke up right on time despite the late night gaming sesh with jefferem, ate a banana and some fruit loops, meditated on whether the shape and colors of his breakfast meant he was subconsciously gay, dismissed that idea, showered and wondered what jefferem looked like in real life, got dressed, thought about how important it is to him to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, caught the tram, picked up his helmet, vest, and firearm from the locker room, considered the deep well of loneliness within him and how not-right he sometimes felt, and at last came to stand at his morning post beside the card reader on Sector D-2’s first floor by the single-person bathroom.

_ Solid Snake is kind of hot, _ Henry had been thinking as he attentively scanned the scientists coming and going through his door.  _ ‘S obvious — it’s the, uh… the goatee. Don’t have to be gay to know that. It doesn’t mean anything. _

He’d kept his eyes down because eye contact was difficult and sometimes the scientists were rude about it, so he was in the prime position to notice that there was something…  _ weird  _ about the tiles, suddenly. A certain section of them looked somehow — off? Like it had more volume than it was meant to. Henry’d stilled, his eyes on that patch of floor, and was thus looking at exactly the right spot to seconds later get an eyeful of one Dr. Gordon Freeman’s dick.

It takes a moment for him to process what he’s seeing, but —  _ oh yo, this guy’s dick out. I should say something,  _ Henry finally realizes, and steps forward to get his attention but then he looks up to make eye contact and —

I’ve translated bizarre, extradimensional alien impulses into human speech, simplified unspeakably complex timelines, pared down the billion things happening at every second to bring you the story as succinctly as I can, but this particular translation is tough. The best I can put Henry’s experience at this moment is that it’s like idly wading in the water past the shore, ocean calm but dark around you, and then suddenly stepping off the edge of a sandbar you didn’t know was supporting you — all at once there’s nothing beneath you, the experience you were having is irrevocably different, and just beneath your toes is the unfathomable depths of a world so completely unlike your own.

Or, to put it another way:

_ Oh FUCK he’s a dude but he’s SO HOT,  _ Henry thinks and it’s like he’s been punched in the gut, his knees actually going weak as he takes in the taller man before him.

Henry might not be tall but he isn’t exactly small, either — Black Mesa’s Security Team has a rigorous physical test that not everyone can pass — but based on the height and the powerful shoulders on this dude, Henry thinks rather faintly that this guy could probably shove him up against a wall and Henry wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop him. His absolute mane of dark curls is touched with premature silver and barely held back by a cute orange scrunchie, which seems incongruous until a smile breaks out across his face. The man’s grin is uncertain and confused but still genuine, showing off slightly crooked white teeth and scrunching up his startlingly green eyes, transforming his whole countenance into something friendly and lively and horribly,  _ horribly  _ handsome.

Henry loses track of the conversation. At some point the dude actually reaches out and  _ touches him,  _ his big, rough hand warm even through Henry’s shirt, and poor Henry just about short-circuits. He wants to touch him back — his hands twitch at his sides because suddenly he  _ wants _ so very badly, wants to trace his fingers over the calluses on this guy’s palms, to drag his hands over the juncture between his neck and shoulders, to tangle one hand in his curls and gently scrape his nails through the guy’s soft-looking beard, to, to…

_ Hug?  _ Henry thinks dizzily.  _ Hug him? Please? _

They don’t hug. In fact the conversation is over before Henry can even attempt to collect himself, the guy striding away without even doing up his fly. Henry stares at the man’s broad back until the metal door seals shut between them. He attempts to swallow, realizes his mouth is dry as the desert, and stumbles away from his post into the single-person bathroom nearby.

He’s so distracted, so confused about his own reaction and what it might mean for himself, that he doesn’t notice that the strangely-shaped patch of tiles from earlier has moved. It slithers around his feet, attempting and failing to get through the heavy-duty metal door before it hesitates — and follows Henry inside just before the door can click shut.

You remember that the creature isn’t human, right? Its thought process isn’t quite like yours. After twenty years it has found its oldest friend, the friend that has already driven it to do crazy, impulsive things it would never otherwise choose to do, and now it finds its way blocked. Black Mesa is a danger to it, particularly if its disguise is seen through, and this guard  _ did  _ see through it (even if only for a moment) — but the creature is clever, and made to adapt. A perfect disguise,  _ and  _ the elimination of a threat — why not deal with two problems in one go?

Henry pulls off his helmet and sets it aside. He splashes cold water from the sink onto his face and looks in the mirror. He has a habit of talking to himself, sometimes, in private, and he does so now: “Dude,” he says. “You can’t — that wasn’t—” He pauses to smack his lips, mind racing and heart jittery. “...Bro. What the  _ fuck _ .”

The creature is camouflaged behind Henry, coiling itself up in preparation to strike. It’s only fifty pounds or so but if it spreads itself thin and strange then it could cocoon its prey, consume it all in one go, kill it quickly and efficiently (just like Tommy taught it) and move on to use the guard’s cardkeys to get through the door and catch up with Gordon.

“You’re  _ not, _ ” Henry tells his reflection, unable to even say the word in relation to himself out loud. The expression mirrored back to him, though, is frazzled and dubious. “ _ I’m  _ not.”

The creature briefly falters; Tommy was very clear about not consuming humans. He indicated that it was very,  _ very  _ important, and that it would be dangerous for all of them, for him and the creature and Sunkist and even Tommy’s dad if the creature ate a human. It wants to protect all of them, not endanger them.

But this is the closest it’s been to Gordon Freeman in over twenty years. And it loves Tommy and Sunkist, but it has also given up a lot for them, over and over — surely, it thinks, surely this one time, it can be forgiven for putting itself first?

“Uh… am I?” Henry asks himself, staring at the man in the mirror, and at that moment the creature strikes.

A shroud of grey, a cut-off “wh—!” …at least it’s over quickly.

The creature gathers itself on the floor, processing the influx of new DNA and mass available to it and pulling together a new shape. It’s almost entirely human, with just a few of its favorite tweaks: enhance the senses a bit, soften the hair (Tommy likes rabbit fur), sharpen the teeth, and don’t forget the ever-present mask of black across its upper face so Gordon might recognize it, might remember the raccoon he once played with in the sand and the mud so many years ago.

The creature pulls itself to its feet, wobbling a bit in its new form. At least it had the presence of mind  _ not  _ to eat the guard’s clothes along with his body and actually manages to fit itself right into them, which it finds rather impressive of itself. As it straightens to its full height it reorganizes the fat-to-muscle distribution a bit to deal with the fact that it’s fifty pounds heavier than Henry was and still needs to fit into his clothes. It’s much bigger now than it’s used to, the ground much further away, but it figures it will adapt to the new size and shape soon enough. As it reaches for Henry’s helmet, it catches sight of itself in the mirror.

Gordon Freeman is getting farther and farther away, but it takes a moment to look at itself anyway because this is what Gordon will see. It flashes its teeth in a smile, stretches its human arms, flexes human fingers (so long and bizarre, compared to claws and paws!). It clears its throat — and realizes with a start that it might need to speak to get through Black Mesa. That’s no problem, though; it has access to this guard’s memories and skills, so all it has to do is stir those up a little bit and pull out what it needs —

_ Huh? _ say the memories of a human life.  _ Wha? What the fuck just happened? _

The creature stills, its metaphorical paw in the metaphorical bee’s nest of Henry’s memories. This hasn’t happened before.

_ Whose voice is that?  _ Henry’s voice says in the creature’s mind.  _ Wait, is that me?  _ The creature is looking at itself in the mirror, grey eyes wide.  _ No, that’s  _ not _ me. Wait, what even happened…? _

And because humans are  _ brilliant,  _ because their processing power is incredible, because they’re sapient as hell — because even the smartest things the creature has eaten it ate as eggs, just raw genetic data without a lifetime of lived memories and experiences to fight against — because isn’t this just the way the story goes, sometimes? — for all these reasons, the memories of Henry reach  _ back.  _ It’s Henry who cracks open the creature’s memories, who scans through and finds an incomprehensible alien, a predatory creature that has killed and eaten and killed and eaten again and again, that thinks itself “nice” and “good” just because it didn’t eat a couple humans for long enough to grow fond of them. And Henry finds the memories of other animals the creature ate before him, finds their memories of quick deaths and, from before Tommy taught it the kindness of efficiency, memories of being hunted down, played with, absorbed slowly and terribly before death came for them, memories of something that chased and stalked and changed shape as it pleased so that it could catch and kill and  _ become. _ Henry finds his own death, how the creature didn’t even think of the fact that it’d be killing a person, how it just worried about what its friends might think and how quickly it could get used to its stolen body so it could chase after some fucking  _ guy,  _ even if he is hot, and even if — even if —

_ Dude, are you  _ in love  _ with that guy??  _ Henry demands, incredulous.  _ Did you kill me because of some, uh, some fucked up… childhood crush… thing? On a  _ guy _?? _

The creature wants to ask why it matters, sullen and confused and angry, but it’s still reeling from being forced through so many memories, so many lives (lives that  _ it ended _ ), and from Henry himself still grabbing more, sorting them, applying human thought and morality to things it had never even considered.

_ Are you me now?  _ Henry asks, his voice cracking in the creature’s mind.  _ You, you can’t be in love with that guy, dude, not if you’re me, cuz that would be — that would mean that you, that we, that I… _

The creature is barely listening to Henry. The shiny, metallic blue it’s always been so fond of now ripples across its-his-their form in time with his-their-its distress as mind, memories, and personalities crash together, the lives of everything this extradimensional alien monster has ever eaten colliding. Sweet voice spills from its-his-their lips, a discordant shriek of deep, dark reds and yellows and worse colors still as the creature tries one last time to shove it all back down, shove down Henry —

_ Wuh — fuckin’ — oh no you don’t,  _ Henry’s memories snarl.  _ Fuck you, bro — _

And it is at this point that someone pushes open the unlocked door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: off-screen violent deaths; accidental misgendering of character not in scene; brief but painfully awkward interaction (ok it’s a dick slip); repressing one’s sexuality; description of physical attraction that made me blush to write; repressed gay dude gets eaten (quick, no blood); applying human morality to an alien/animal hunting; horror; identity crisis. if there’s something else i should be tagging for lmk?
> 
> 1\. if i had a nickel for every time i wrote an eldritch multidimensional Thing that becomes human-adjacent by stealing another’s body without considering the consequences and subsequently has a bit of a breakdown about identity, guilt, and pronouns, i’d have two nickels. which isn’t a lot but it certainly says something about me that i wrote it [twice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24375937/chapters/58791037)  
> 2\. “hm, i woke up particularly happy and excited this morning. what could be causing it…? oh!! it’s because today i FINALLY get to kill henry :D!” if you’ve read my HLVRAI one-shots then you’ve already met him in the form of benrey’s “human thoughts;” he’s basically just the pieces that were missing from the creature to make it the not-human we know and love. also, sometimes u have to be consumed by and sort-of-become a monster before u can come out to urself as queer! we’ve all been there.  
> 3\. is gordon actually objectively hot in this story? no idea and i’m trying to be mmmostly vague about appearances so readers can fill in the blanks as they please BUT i do think it’d be very funny if henry/benrey had bad taste :] anyway gordon really strikes me as the kind of guy who just does NOT have his shit together. he’s been running full speed since college and he knows if he ever took a break he would collapse so instead he just keeps chuggin even when he’s in obvious disrepair. also, EXTREMELY rude joshua >:3  
> 4\. tbh i was kinda meh about HLVRAI initially. it was funny and i was a bit :eyes emoji: about some of its lines but it didn’t truly set my brain on fire til i read KogoDogo’s [Human Resources Violation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24773827/chapters/59903707), whereupon i said “WAIT WE CAN DO THAT???” and got the gasoline and matches out myself. i’m basically copping a plot point directly from that fic so if you somehow haven’t read it yet, i’d highly recommend!  
> 5\. NEXT TIME: familiar faces :)
> 
> i hope this story finds you well. til next time!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Love You, Goodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544591) by [Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat/pseuds/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat)




End file.
